Gujarat Open Golf Championship begins from March 1

Ahmedabad, Feb 28 (PTI) Top Indian golfers, including Olympian Udayan Mane and former Asian Tour winner Khalin Joshi, will be vying for honours at the third edition of the Rs 1 crore Gujarat Open Golf Championship beginning here on Wednesday.

The tournament, to be held at the Kalhaar Blues & Greens Golf Club, comprises 126 players — 123 professionals and three amateurs.

Besides Mane and Joshi, the event is set to feature Viraj Madappa, Yuvraj Singh Sandhu, Om Prakash Chouhan, Kshitij Naveed Kaul, Abhijit Singh Chadha and Sachin Baisoya, among others.

The foreign players in the field include Sri Lanka’s Mithun Perera, N Thangaraja and K Prabagaran, Bangladesh’s Jamal Hossain and Badal Hossain, Canada’s Sukhraj Singh Gill, Australia’s Kunal Bhasin, USA’s Varun Chopra, and Japan’s Makoto Iwasaki.

The local challenge will be led by Gujarat-based professionals Varun Parikh, Anshul Patel, Shravan Desai and Jay Pandya. The Gujarat-based amateurs in the field are Dhruv Suri and Swayam Ambalia. The third amateur in the field is Noida-based teenager Aarav Shah of Australia.

The PGTI staged a qualifying event for professionals ahead of the main event for the first time ever.

There were 21 professionals in the field at the qualifier that took place on Tuesday.

The top two professionals who qualified for the main draw of the event were Bikramjit Singh Sandhu (73) and Imran Ali Mollah (74). Imran Ali Mollah defeated Manav Bais (74) in a playoff for the second spot.