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Rookies on a roll

Joy Chakravarty

Three rookies on the Wills Sport Indian Golf Tour made it to the main draw of the Hero Honda Masters '99, the 13th leg of the Asian PGA's Davidoff Tour, confirming once again the rosy future of Indian professional golf.

Digvijay Singh of Meerut, Amit Dube (Delhi) and Harmeet Kahlon (Chandigarh) are sure to tee off when the $-200,000 tournament begins at the Delhi Golf Club from Thursday, 28 October, 1999. The pro-am will be played on Wednesday, 27 October.

Apart from the 14 Indians who entered the tournament on the basis of being Asian PGA Tour regulars, the Professional Golfers Association of India (PGAI) has 15 spots which are handed on the basis of the best two performances in the three domestic tournaments - the Hindu-Cosmo Open, the Color Plus Open (both Chennai) and the Wills Southern Open, which was played in Bangalore in September.

Digvijay, the amateur winner of this year's Wills Indian Open, was sixth in the list of 15, with a seventh place finish in Color Plus Open and a 16th place in Wills Southern Open.

Amit Dube was 11th, with a tied seventh finish in Hindu-Cosmo Open and tied 22nd in Wills Southern Open, while Kahlon was 13th, with tied 17th and tied 14th finish at Color Plus Open and Wills Southern Open respectively.

Two more rookies - Zai Kipgen of Delhi and Tarun Sardesai of Bangalore - were among the next ten names in the waiting list and almost sure to make it to the main draw. Zai is third in the waiting list, while Tarun is ninth.

Leading the 15 names who made it to the Hero Honda Masters '99 through the Indian Tour is Calcutta's Basad Ali, who finished tied for the runner-up place at Wills Southern Open and tied third at Color Plus Open. Shiv Prakash, runner-up in the Indian Tour Order of Merit last season, was second in with a tied third finish at Color Plus Open and tied seventh place at the Hindu-Cosmo Open.

The 15 PGAI entries: 1. Basad Ali (Cal), 2. Shiv Prakash (Kan), 3. Mukesh Kumar (Mhow), 4. Rohtas Singh (Del), 5. Devendra Patel (Mhow), 6. Digvijay Singh (Meerut), 7. Sanjay Kumar (Lucknow), 8. Gast Ram (Del), 9. Manohar Dike (Mum), 10. Rafiq Ali (Cal), 11. Amit Dube (Del), 12. SSP Chowrasia (Cal), 13. Harmeet Kahlon (Chd), 14. Binod Pandey (Cal), 15. Yusuf Ali (Cal).

Indian entries through APGA Tour: 1. Ali Sher (Del), 2. Amritinder Singh (Chd), 3. Amandeep Johl (Chd), 4. Arjun Atwal (Cal), 5. Arjun Singh (Del), 6. Feroz Ali (Cal), 7. Gaurav Ghei (Del), 8. Indrajit Bhalotia (Cal), 9. Jeev M Singh (Chd), 10. Jyoti Randhawa (Del), 11. KPS Sekhon (Chd), 12. Uttam S Mundy (Cal), 13. Vijay Kumar (Lucknow), 14. Vivek Bhandari (Del)