Golfer Sandhu surges ahead with second-round 68 at Digboi

Digboi (Assam), Nov 18 (IANS) Chandigarh's Yuvraj Singh Sandhu surged ahead with a second round of four-under 68 at the IndianOil SERVO Masters Golf 2021 being played at the Digboi Golf Links.

The 24-year-old Sandhu (66-68), placed three off the lead in tied second position after round one, had a slow start to the day but made big gains on the back-nine to move his total to 10-under 134 on day two.

Sri Lanka's Anura Rohana shot the day's best score of six-under 66 to rise to tied second at nine-under 135 along with Harendra Gupta (68) of Chandigarh. The cut was applied at even-par 144 -- fifty professionals made the cut.

Earlier in the day, the start of play was delayed by 45 minutes due to fog. The play got underway at 6:45 IST. The 18 players who could not finish their first round on Wednesday, came out and completed their round in the morning. The second round began simultaneously.

Among those who completed round one on Thursday morning was Om Prakash Chouhan of Mhow, who shot a 66, to join Sandhu and Shravan Desai of Ahmedabad in tied second, three shots behind the leader Anshul Patel, another Ahmedabad golfer.

In round two, Sandhu, a two-time winner on the PGTI Feeder Tour, was even-par for the day through 10 holes having made a birdie and bogey before he hit his stride with four birdies between the 11th and 18th.

Sandhu came close to holing out his chip for eagle on the 11th and almost drove the green on the par-4 14th. The 2019 PGTI Feeder Tour Order of Merit champion then played two more accurate wedge shots that led to birdies on the 15th and 18th.

Anura Rohana (69-66) fired the day's best score of 66 to climb 11 spots to tied second. Rohana, who was even-par for his first 11 holes of the day, went on a birdie-spree with five straight birdies from the third till the seventh as he converted some long putts and made a chip-in on the sixth. He closed the day with another birdie on the ninth.

Harendra Gupta (67-68), lying overnight tied fifth, moved up three spots to joint second after posting a 68. Gupta, a former champion, began the day with a bogey on the first before rallying with five birdies thereafter including a chip-in on the third and birdies on three of the four par-5s.

Om Prakash Chouhan (70) of Mhow was placed fourth at eight-under 136 while M Dharma (68) of Bengaluru and Bangladesh's Md Akbar Hossain (69) were both in tied fifth place at seven-under 137. Round one leader Anshul Patel shot a 76 to slip to tied 10th at five-under 139. The only local golfer to make the cut was Deepraj Chetia (69-71) who ended the day in tied 15th at four-under 140.