By IANS
Bangalore : Shiv Kapur may not be teeing off in the main tournament, starting Thursday, but he still managed to give the Rs.3 million Global Green tournament a roaring start by guiding his team to victory at the Bangalore Open Pro-Am which saw a big gathering despite the wet conditions at the Karnataka Golf Association (KGA) golf course here Wednesday.
However, the players marked down for the afternoon session had to return disappointed because the wet conditions forced a cancellation of the second half. Prizes were awarded on the performance in the morning session.
Weather played spoilsport as both the professionals and the amateurs were keen to get their first taste of a big competition at the re-done KGA course, which after completion of the re-laying work on the back, opened to members only six weeks back.
The main tournament offers a winners cheque of Rs.484,950.
Kapur, who committed to only the Pro-Am, which comes at the end of the long international season for him, played in the company of Vineet Chabbra, managing director and Group CEO of the sponsors, Global Green, Nitin Jaju and Utpal Desai.
Kapur said: “I have had a long season and had committed to some other engagements, but I still felt I needed to play the Pro-Am here. And I was pleasantly surprised with the victory. Frankly, my amateur partners played really well and they got us the victory.”
“I was very keen to test the back nine, because I am familiar with the front nine, but because of the rains, I could not get a proper feel of it,” said Asian Tour star S.S.P. Chowrasia whose team came second.
Chowrasia’s comprised cricket commentator Charu Sharma, Sanjiv Mehra and Prem Bhatia. Rookie pro Anirban Lahiri led his team of Kanwaljit Singh, S. Murali and Pervez Khan to third place.
While most of the top stars got to play the course in the morning and that included the likes of Kapur, Chowrasia, Rahil Gangjee, Ashok Kumar, Gagangjeet Bhullar, Harmeet Kahlon, Amandeep Johl, Vivek Bhandari and Uttam Singh Mundy, some others like Mukesh Kumar, Vijay Kumar, Firoze Ali and even local man, Rahul Ganapathy were left watching the rain and the waterlogged fairways.