Kshitij Naveed Kaul wrapped up his second title with an ‘ice-cool’ even-par 72 at the ICC RCGC Open at the Royal Calcutta Golf Club.
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The 20-year-old Kshitij (69-65-70-72), the overnight leader by one shot, maintained his hold at the top of the leaderboard through the day after getting out of trouble on a number of occasions. He ended with a tournament tally of 12-under 276 to prevail by one shot.
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Ankur Chadha (68-69-69-71) struck a 71 to move up one spot and finish a career-best second at 11-under 277.
Angad Cheema (68-68-69-73) shot a 73 to drop one spot to third place at 10-under 278.
Sunit Chowrasia (71-68-71-70) had the best finish among the Kolkata golfers as he took fourth place at eight-under 280.
Kshitij had an early setback when he bogeyed the third. The ever-smiling boy, who hardly displays emotions on the course, then made some outstanding recoveries from the rough to claim birdies on the fourth and fifth and stretch his lead to a comfortable three shots.
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Playing his third season on PGTI, played a brilliant bunker shot on the 11th to set up a tap-in and save par. A couple of erratic iron shots then resulted in bogeys for him on the 12th and 13th as his lead came down to just one shot.
He wrested the initiative as he produced another fabulous bunker shot on the 15th for a tap-in birdie. He went on to sink a four-feet pressure putt on the 18th to win the title.
Kshitij said, “I wanted to go as low as I could but I made a few mistakes today. Nonetheless, I made some good short putts and managed to pull off birdies from tough spots. I recovered really well from the rough and the bunker on more than one occasion and that too at key moments.
“Even when my lead came down to just one shot, I didn’t change anything and continued to play in my natural aggressive style. Just before making the winning putt, a four-footer for par, I was mindful of the fact that in Pune too I made a four-feet conversion to win back in 2019. So I addressed the ball with that positive thought.
“I’ve been pretty consistent this season and this win is a result of that consistency,” he added. He took home the winning cheque worth Rs 6,46,600 to move up from 19th place to 14th position on the Order of Merit.
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Ankur was Kshitij’s nearest challenger for the title through the day. He made two birdies and a bogey to end up as one of only two players in the field (along with Sunit) to shoot four sub-par rounds.
Ankur, struggling to find fairways through the day, kept himself in contention with his putting. He recovered from the trees and made a 25-feet birdie conversion on the 16th to get within one shot of the lead. However, he could not convert from long range on the 17th and 18th to catch up. He narrowly missed his 25-feet birdie putt on the 18th.
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Angad did not recover after his three bogeys early on took him to one-over for the day at the turn. He made pars all the way till the end.
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, the overnight leader by one shot, maintained his hold at the top on the final day of the ICC-RCGC Open.){kind=link}