Kahlon team bags ProAm title

By Our Sports Reporter

BANGALORE, AUG. 21. Harmeet Kahlon, the professional from Chandigarh and his group of amateurs including Avinash Giri, Indur Hirani and C.A. Nagaraj bagged the ProAm event prior to the commencement of the Hero Honda Open at the Karnataka Golf Association course here on Tuesday.

The winning team scored 121 points on the Stableford format. Harmeet took home a cheque of Rs. 5,000 and a gift hamper from Nike. The amateurs received a Nike gift hamper and a trophy each.

Professional Indrajit Bhalotia, last year's winner of the Bangalore Wills Southern Open, and his team of amateurs-K.V. Reddy, Venugopal Rao and Hitesh Joshi-finished second. Bhalotia who lost his golf set recently on the return flight from Malaysia and who is playing with an borrowed set, did well to finish a creditable second. His team logged 109 points.

Vijay Kumar and his team of Madhur Sood, Rajesh Joshi and Jyothi Ramlingam also logged 109 points but Bhalotia's team emerged runner-up on the better fourth card scores.

Bhalotia received Rs. 3,000 and Vijay Kumar received Rs. 2,000. The amateurs in both the teams were presented trophies. Other prize winners are: Vijay Kumar, who had the best individual professional score of five under 67, received Rs. 3,000; Shiv Prakash and Digvijay Singh tied for the second spot with identical scores of two under 70.

The Hero Honda Open commences here on Wednesday. Arjun Atwal has dropped out on medical grounds, however, Gaurav Ghei who was not expected to participate has confirmed he would be playing.

Indrajit Bhalotia said after the ProAm round that the greens were playing fast and that he expected a good showing from his colleagues. ``I expect the final scores to be around 12 under,'' Bhalotia said.

Brandon de Souza, chief of Tiger Sports Marketing, said that the players to watch out for were Vivek Bhandary, Indrajit Bhalotia, Harmeet Kahlon, Shiv Prakash, Feroz Ali and Mukesh Kumar. Former cricketer Kapil Dev is among the prominent amateur players.

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