Indian Open

Ahlawat and Shubhankar during the media interaction on Wednesday.
| Photo Credit: Kamesh Srinivaan

A battery of champions, more than a dozen of them from around the world, will be flexing their muscles to hit their best shots and sink putts, but the home fans will look for a familiar face to lift the trophy in the $2.25 million Hero Indian Open golf championship that tees off at the DLF Golf and Country Club on Thursday.

Veer Ahlawat had risen to the challenge last time and finished runner-up to Keita Nakajima of Japan. S.S.P. Chawrasia had won the title for the second time when the event was played at the same course for the first time in 2017.

There will be 30 Indians this time in a strong field of 138 and four of them will be amateurs, including Kartik Singh, who had a memorable time during the International Series event in January.

Excited

Veer and Shubhankar Sharma, who are busy in the big league of the DP World Tour, were excited to come home and play in front of friends and family. They exuded confidence to tune their all-round game in their attempt to deliver the best performance.

“Under par will be a top-10 finish this time,” announced the 28-year-old Shubhankar even as he reminded one that the cut was applied at 1-under last time.

A fabulous champion, Shubhankar turned professional when he was 16 and has made the cut every time in this event since 2015, with the tied seventh spot as his best finish.

Ahlawat recalled that the first top-5 performance of his career in such an elite field, last year as the runner-up, had served as “a big confidence booster”.

“The course changes every year. It all depends on how they set it up. It is more intimidating this time. The rough is thicker. It is good to play a tough course,” said Shubhankar.

Veer conceded that he had not been getting good scores even though his game has been good.

With his rich experience at a young age, Shubhankar was able to put things in perspective and observed that playing around the world in a season was like a marathon.

“I am slowly getting into the flow of things. You need to strike when you feel good,” said Shubhankar as he talked about having equipment change in recent weeks to get his feel in sync with his game for better scores

Delving deeper into the point of having an Indian champion, Shubhankar said it did not matter whether an Indian emerged the champion on Sunday as the overall golf scenario in the country was very healthy.

“We have more players and a lot of them are getting good scores. Anirban Lahiri and Gaganjeet Bhullar have won. I had a purple patch. Indian golf is on the rise. There will be many winners in the future,” stressed Shubhankar.

The first round tee-off will be from 6.25 a.m. The live television coverage on Euro-Sport will be from 1 p.m.