SRINAGAR, Sep 17: Delhi’s Honey Baisoya carded a superb six-under 66 in round three to take a four-shot lead in the J&K Open 2021 golf tournament, here on Friday.
Six-time PGTI winner Baisoya (67-69-66) has played error-free golf for the first three days of the tournament and did not drop a single bogey.
Rookie Kartik Sharma (69-72-65), carrying forward the form from his top-20 finishes in the last two weeks, produced the day’s lowest score of 65 to take a leap of 15 spots to tied second at 10-under 206 at the Rs 40 lakh PGTI event at the Royal Springs Golf Course.
Panchkula’s Angad Cheema (69-71-66) fired a 66 to gain 10 spots and end the day in a share for second place along with Kartik and Ahmedabad’s Shravan Desai (69-68-69).
Baisoya, whose last win came in 2018, has attributed his consistency this week to his top-class striking with the 2-iron and his new putter.
“I’ve not played well in a while so I was nervous from the start of this event. But I’ve been hitting my 2-iron well and that helped set up a lot of opportunities for me. I made 17 greens in regulation today and 16 each on the first two days,” he said.
“My new putter has also helped my scoring. I missed the cut last week because of my poor putting so I’m glad that I changed my putter just a day prior to this week’s event.”
Delhi’s Rashid Khan, Bengaluru’s Khalin Joshi and Karnal’s Mani Ram were in tied fifth place at nine-under 207 while Pune-based Olympian Udayan Mane and Gurugram’s Veer Ahlawat were a further stroke back in tied eighth position.
Indian golf legend Jyoti Randhawa was placed tied 37th at even-par 216. (PTI)
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