By IANS
Waialae (Hawaii) : Daniel Chopra, who last week won the Mercedes Benz Championships to book his berth for the Augusta Masters, will have a chance to exchange notes with defending Masters champion Zach Johnson.
The Indo-Swede has been paired with Johnson and 2003 PGA Championships winner Shaun Micheel for the first two rounds of their Sony Open beginning Thursday.
Chopra’s win in Mercedes last week saw him jump into the top-100 for the first time with a sensational win over Steve Stricker in the play-off. Chopra rose 59 places to World Number 61 and also climbed to second in the European Ryder Cup World Points List.
Gaurav Ghei, who had received a special invitation to the event, pulled out due to an illness in the family.
Chopra is coming off a great run which includes winning the penultimate PGA Tour event of 2007, the Ginn sur Mer Classic at Tesoro and a play-off loss to Aaron Baddeley at the Mastercard Masters in Australia in November.
Twenty-two of the 31 men who competed in the Mercedes-Benz Championship at Kapalua Resort are entered in this week’s Sony Open in Hawaii. That includes defending champion Paul Goydos and past winners Jim Furyk (1996) and Vijay Singh (2005). Furyk and Singh are the two highest ranked players in the field again.
The Asian Tour’s challenge will be led by Liang Wen-chong of China. Liang, the first Chinese player to lift the Asian Tour’s Order of Merit crown after a stellar season last year, was invited to the US PGA Tour event based on his newly attained status as the region’s top player.
Liang’s goals are straightforward this year – he hopes to win a second career title, qualify for the Masters Tournament by breaking into the world’s top-50 before April and launch a possible attempt at the US PGA Tour Qualifying School. He is currently ranked 87th in the world.