Not long ago, a Bengaluru teenage girl went on to impress the best of the golfers. The girl, Aditi Ashok, is now an established player on the Ladies PGA Tour.
Bengaluru :
Not long ago, a Bengaluru teenage girl went on to impress the best of the golfers. The girl, Aditi Ashok, is now an established player on the Ladies PGA Tour.
Two other Bengaluru girls – Rishika Muralidhar and Avani Prashanth – are also dreaming to reach the same heights as Ashok in the coming years.
Muralidhar, 13, has consistently performed in the junior circuit – in India and at the US Kids golf. Recently, she topped the Category B (13-15 years) in the Indian Golf Union Southern India Ladies and Junior Girls Golf Championship at the Clover Greens Golf Club. Muralidhar played a fine game of 3-over, 1-under and 2-under over three rounds to complete the tournament with level par. She also had a bogey-free round on Day 3 to emerge on top. In the combined Category A and B standings, Muralidhar was placed third.
“This was my first competition in the ‘B’ category and I felt I did well. The target is to now improve. As the distance of the golf course is going bigger in the ‘B’ category, it will be a challenge to master the strokes but with hard work, I will get better,” says Muralidhar, who trains under Ashok’s coach Steven Giulian. “I will be playing mostly in India for now besides two international competitions and get better.”
The other Bengaluru girl set to impress is Prashanth, a grade seven student of Greenwood High International School, with two wins in two weeks. She won the Category C (11-13 years) at the same tournament. Prashanth played rounds of 3-over, 2-under and level-par to finish with a score of 211 – nine strokes ahead of her nearest competitor. She led the tournament field on all three days and played the only under par round of the tournament in the age category, in a tournament field comprising of 21 players at the start of the tournament.
On Friday, she continued her good run, winning the Category C in the IGU Rotary Karnataka Ladies and Junior Girls Golf Championship at the Eagleton Golf Resort. She played rounds of 6-over, 2-over and 4-over to finish with a score of 228, two strokes ahead of her nearest competitor Ananya Garg.
Prashanth, who has been playing golf since the age of three, has been among top five at the US Kids Golf World Championship at Pinehurst North Carolina in 2014, 2015 and 2016 in U-7, U-8 and U-9 age groups, respectively. She has also been among the top five in US Kids Golf European Championship in 2016, 2017 and 2018. She also won the Order of Merit in 2015 and 2017 by winning all the tournaments conducted by South Zone Junior Golf under the auspices of the Indian Golf Union.
Now, Prashanth aims to better her skills. “I want to represent India at the 2024 Olympics and win a gold medal. I want to become a golfer of repute in women’s golf,” she says.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Bengaluru / by Express News Service / May 04th, 2019