Abhishek Jha takes opening round honours in Indian Oil Servo Masters Golf

Our Correspondent

Digboi: Bengaluru’s Abhishek Jha took the opening round honours with a classy six-under 66 at the 20th edition of the Indian Oil Servo Masters Golf at the Digboi Golf Links.

M Dharma, another Bengalurean, Kolkata’s Shankar Das, a three-time winner at Digboi, and Om Prakash Chouhan of Mhow, were close on the leader’s heels in tied second with scores of five-under 67 at the Rs 60 lakh event.

Abhishek Jha began the tournament in splendid fashion with a chip-in birdie on the first hole. The tall and lanky Jha, one of the longest hitters on the TATA Steel PGTI, continued his good chipping form to set up more birdies on the seventh and 11th, recovering well from the bunker on the latter. Abhishek also sank birdies from a range of 12 to 20 feet on the eighth, 13th and 15th.

Jha, who kept his card free of bogeys, said, “Chipping was the weakest link in my game so I’ve worked really hard on it recently. The hard work is paying off now as was evident from today’s round where I played a lot of good chip shots. The gradual improvement in my chipping is helping me reduce the number of bogeys and increase the number of birdies during my rounds.”

“It’s always good to start a tournament with a birdie and that too a chip-in. So that opening birdie literally set the ball rolling for me. I made a couple of good par saves on the front-nine and sank more than my fair share of putts with 23 putts in total. I mostly kept the ball in play and made 11 greens in regulation.”

Earlier, the Indian Oil Servo Masters Golf 2019 was inaugurated by Sandeep S John, Executive Director, IOCL (AOD), Digboi Refinery in the presence of members and officials of PGTI, AOD officials and officials of Digboi Golf Club.

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