Chennai
GOLF
Diksha Dagar finishes Tied-6th for season’s best show
Diksha Dagar registered her best finish on the Ladies European Tour this season with a Tied-6th place at the 2023 Belgian Ladies Open.
Diksha, one of the only two Indians to taste success on the LET, closed with a bogey on 18th for an even par 72 in the final round.
Patricia Isabel Schmidt fired an excellent final round of 66 (-6) to win by two shots.
Diksha, who had a disappointing start to the season, has made the cut in each of the last four events and has been improving along the way.
Starting the final round in tied second place, Diksha stayed close to the lead and was at one point just one off the lead after the turn. On the back nine she gave away three bogeys against birdie for a 72 and finished in a big group at sixth.
India’s other player to make the cut, Amandeep Drall, shot 1-under 71 and finished T-24th, also her best finish this season.
Patricia from Germany sat three shots behind overnight leader Maria Hernandez on five-under-par after rounds of 71-68 on the first two days. She bogeyed third and fifth but she soon turned around her card.
Four consecutive birdies on holes six through nine put her a couple of shots off the lead and she was soon co-leader after back-to-back birdies on 12 and 13. A superb eagle on 14 put the 27-year-old in pole position on 11-under-par, which was enough to seal her first title on the LET.
In the 2023 Race to Costa del Sol, the top four players remain in the same order with Aditi Ashok leading, followed by Linn Grant in second, Ana Peláez Trivino in third and Klara Davidson Spilkova in fourth.
-PTI
Sharma finishes 16th at KLM Dutch Open on DP World Tour
Shubhankar Sharma played a bogey-free round on the final day, but would still have been disappointed with just two birdies for a round of 2-under 70 that saw him finish tied-16th in the KLM Dutch Open, a part of the DP World Tour.
Sharma with rounds of 67-74-72-70 totalled 5-under for the week.
Pablo Larrazábal of Spain produced a brilliant finish as he birdied the final two holes to win for the second time in his last three starts.
Sharma, who started the week with a 67, shot 74 and 72 in his middle two rounds and both included a double bogey each day. On the final day, while he avoided the bogeys, he could not get many of his birdie putts to drop.
Shubhankar, who started the year with a T-7 in Abu Dhabi, has since finished in the top-20 only twice -- at the Hero Indian Open, where he was T-13 and his week in KLM Open a T-16. Sharma is currently 65th on the Race to Dubai rankings.
Manu Gandas, the other Indian in the field, missed the cut.
The 40-year-old Larrazábal was the man to catch ahead of the final round but a double bogey on the second hole saw others have a chance. No less than seven players held a share of the lead at various points of time at Bernardus Golf.
He converted a 21-foot birdie putt at the last for a three-under par 69 and a two-stroke victory on 13 under.
Larrazábal won the Korea Championship -- his last non-Major start --in April and now has four victories in the space of 15 months following his victory at the 103rd edition of the Netherlands’ national open.
Fellow Spaniard Adrian Otaegui finished on 11-under par and was second.
Denmark’s Rasmus Højgaard and South African Deon Germishuys shared third place on 10-under par, with Poland’s Adrian Meronk, Thai Kiradech Aphibarnrat and Daniel Hillier of New Zealand were a shot further back in a tie for fifth.
-PTI
India’s Nishtha Madan finishes seventh in Florida
India’s Nishtha Madan fired a solid five-under 68 on the final day of the Inova Mission Inn Resort and Club Championship to finish tied seventh, her first Top-10 finish of the season.
After rounds of 75-71 on the first two days, Madan had seven birdies against two bogeys for a 68 and she was 5-under 214 for the week at the Par-73 course.
The other Indian in the field, Pranavi Urs, had earlier missed the cut.
Jiwon Jeon, who turned 26 two days earlier, celebrated her birthday with her first career Epson Tour victory.
Jeon started the day one-shot behind the lead but once she took control of the lead, she never looked back.
The now 26-year-old started her final round looking to make a push early to put pressure on the 36-hole leader, Roberta Liti. Jeon shot 70 and finished at 10-under, while Malaysian rookie, Alyaa Abdulghany (68) and Lindsay Duncan (71) were tied second.
Alyaa Abdulghany’s third top-10 finish moved her to No.11 on the Race for the Card.
Rounding out the top five were Roberta Liti finishing 4th (-7) and Min A Yoon and Haylee Harford finishing T5 (-6) respectively.
-PTI
Atwal finishes 49th on debut, Stricker wins second Senior Major in a row
India’s Arjun Atwal carded a disappointing 75 to sign off at Tied 49 on his debut at the Senior PGA Championship here.
Playing only his second event on the Champions Tour, Atwal had one birdie against two bogeys and a double bogey in the final round.
He had rounds of 73-72-72-75 for 4-over 292.
Steve Stricker went into a play-off to edge out Padraig Harrington and win the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship at Fields Ranch East in Frisco, Texas. It was his second Senior Major in a row and sixth overall.
Jeev Milkha Singh had missed the cut earlier.
Stricker has his daughter, Izzi, on the bag as he started the final round one shot behind Harrington, who had fallen back and needed a birdie on the 18th to force a play-off.
Stricker had a one-shot lead over the long-hitting Harrington when they came to the par-5 18th. Harrington hammered a 335-yard drive to leave himself about 200 yards. Stricker laid back with a 3-wood off the tee to force himself to lay up into wedge position.
Harrington’s second shot landed short of a left greenside bunker, bounced back and to the right, and went along the bunker before settling 25 feet from the hole. Harrington two-putted, and Stricker could manage only par, forcing a playoff.
They returned to 18, but this time, Harrington lost his drive right inside a hazard. He tried to hack it out but topped it into the water. Dropping well back in the fairway, he ripped a 5-wood from 272 yards to about 13 feet but missed the par putt, giving Stricker the win.
Stricker won the first major of the year, the Regions Tradition, when he beat the field by five shots. Stricker now has three wins this season and leads the Charles Schwab Cup race by a wide margin.
Stricker now joins a group of only five other players to win at least six senior majors. Bernhard Langer has the most, with 11.
Stewart Cink, playing in the final group with Stricker and Harrington, finished alone in third place in his PGA TOUR Champions debut. Cink had the only eagle of the day on 18 to finish at 16 under, two shots out of the playoff.
Y E Yang of Korea shot 70 in the final round after 69s on the first three days and he was sole fourth.
- PTI
SQUASH
Veer Chotrani beat top seed Rahul Baitha 11-8, 11-6, 11-2 to set up a title clash against second seed Suraj Chand in the 6th Cello NSCI Open squash championship on Monday.
The women’s final will be between Urwashi Joshi and Anahat Singh.
The results (semifinals):
Men: Veer Chotrani bt Rahul Baitha 11-8, 11-6, 11-2; Suraj Chand bt Jamal Sakib 11-7, 11-2, 11-9;
Women: Urwashi Joshi bt Sunita Patel 11-7, 11-4, 11-7; Anahat Singh bt Janet Vidhi 11-5, 11-1, 11-2.
Boys:
Under-19: Tavneet Singh bt Bhagwan Das 11-1, 11-9, 11-4; Yuvraj Wadhwani bt Adhish Kancharia 11-8, 11-4, 11-4.
Under-17: Priyaan Thakker bt Aditya Chandan 11-7, 11-9, 11-4; Aryaveer Dewan bt Arjun Somani 11-7, 12-10, 11-7.
Under-15: Saharsh Shahra bt Mihir Bopana 11-6, 9-11, 11-4, 11-6; Purav Rambhia bt Ishaan Dabke 11-9, 11-5, 6-11, 11-6.
Under-13: Dhruv Bopana bt Shreyansh Jha 11-8, 11-6, 9-11, 11-8; Aryaman Singh bt Yusuf Pardiwala 11-5, 11-4, 11-1.
Under-11: Prabhav Bajoria bt Krishiv Mittal 11-8, 11-4, 11-2; Aaditya Shah bt Parshuram Lachaka 11-9, 9-11, 16-14, 11-4.
Girls:
Under-17: Navya Sundararajan bt Sanvi Batar 11-4, 9-11, 11-6, 11-6; Akanksha Gupta bt Rudra Singh 5-11, 11-4, 11-7, 11-7.
Under-15: Diva Shah bt Kriya Saravanan 6-11, 11-8, 12-10, 15-13; Aelina Shah bt Aarika Mishra 11-3, 3-11, 11-9, 11-8.
Under-13: Vasundhara Nangare bt Soniya Waghamare 11-4, 16-14, 8-11, 13-11; Aroma bt Arnaa Dwivedi 8-11, 11-8, 11-8, 11-2.
Under-11: Sudhanjali Yadav bt Shanaya Parasrampuria 11-8, 11-9, 11-9; Gargi Kadam bt Shanaya Roy 11-9, 11-4, 5-11, 11-9.
-Kamesh Srinivasan
TENNIS
Nagal gets into German Challenger main draw as lucky loser
Sumit Nagal was beaten in the second and final qualifying round 6-1, 7-6(4) by Robert Strombachs of Latvia, but made the main draw as a lucky-loser in the €73,000 Challenger tennis tournament in Troisdorf, Germany, on Monday.
In the main draw, Sumit will play Dimitar Kuzmanov of Bulgaria.
- Team Sportstar
ATHLETICS
Elakkiyadasan, David enter 8m long jump club at Tamil Nadu State senior athletics championships
FILE PHOTO: K. Elakkiyadasan.
The Tamil Nadu jumpers have done very well this year. While the long jump national record-holder Jeswin Aldrin is now the world leader in the event this year, Praveen Chithraval is the third best triple jumper on the planet this season.
That appears to have inspired sprinter K. Elakkiyadasan, last year’s National Open 100m champion, and long jumper P. David.
The 28-year-old Elakkiyadasan produced a gold-winning 8.09m long jump at the Tamil Nadu State senior athletics championships in Tirunelveli on Sunday that made him enter the India’s top-10 all-time list in the event.
P. David, who won the senior Federation Cup long jump gold in Ranchi recently, also entered the 8-metre top-10 club with 8.05m while taking the silver medal.
- Stan Rayan
Amlan clocks 10.55 for 100m
In the Netherlands, Amlan Borgohain clocked 10.55s in the men’s 100m heats at the T-Meeting in Tilburg on Monday and qualified for the final. Women’s 100m hurdles national record-holder Jyothi Yarraji also made the final after clocking 11.76s in the 100m heats. However, both the Indians did not run the final.
And P. Muhammed Afsal was third overall after the men’s 400m heats with 48.43s.
- Stan Rayan
Harmilan second in 800m ‘B’ final
In Britain, national 1500m record-holder Harmilan Bains was second in the women’s 800m ‘B’ final with 2.04.36s in British Milers Club Grand Prix in Manchester.
- Stan Rayan
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