Mysore amateur sweeps aside experienced field to win pro golf tournament

Last Saturday, a 17-year-old amateur from Mysore smashed aside a packed field of professional golfers to score a landmark win on the Hero Women’s Professional Golf Tour at the Prestige Golfshire course near Bangalore.

Vidhatri Urs totalled 16 under par 200 with rounds of 65, 67 and 68 to win by 13 shots over another amateur, Saanvi Somu of Bangalore and rookie pro Jasmine Shekar, also from the Karnataka capital, leaving experienced golfers far behind in her wake.

The result was one of the most convincing on the domestic circuit in recent times and the sscore posted by Urs will go into the record books as being the second-best aggregate on the Women’s Golf Association of India-run tour alongside the one recorded by Gurgaon’s Vani Kapoor at the Eagleton course, also near Bangalore.

Vidhatri Urs’ three-day aggregate was just one shot behind the all-time best on the WGAI’s books, a 17 under par total recorded by Kiran Matharu at the Classic Golf and Country Club near Gurgaon in 2015. In a curious coincidence, the last amateur tour winner was another Karnataka golfer, Avani Prashanth of Bangalore, who also secured a 13-shot win in the final leg of the 2022 season at Chandigarh.

There were two interesting aspects to the Golfshire result. One, that an amateur was able to outpoint a peer group that included several battle-tested professionals by such a massive margin; and two, there were two non-professionals on the podium.

Over the course of the 2023 Hero WPGT season, the number of young amateurs making a mark has been steadily on the rise, This is not a new phenomenon, but with the list of entries getting longer by the year, it underlines how the women’s game in India is making significant strides forward.

As if to emphasize just this fact, Jhajjar’s Diksha Dagar scored her second victory on the Ladies European Tour (LET) the very next day at the Czech Ladies Open. The LET is the world’s second most prominent professional circuit behind the US-based LPGA and draws vastly-experienced fields that include several past major winners.

Tokyo Olympics participant Dagar, who is also a gold and silver medallist at the Deaf Olympics that are held after the traditional Summer Games, won her first LET event – the Investec Women’s South Africa Open – in 2019. The Czechia result also put her on track to seal qualification for the upcoming Paris Olympics next year.

Incidentally, India’s leading woman golfer Aditi Ashok, opened her international 2023 season with victory at the LET’s Magical Kenya Open before moving back to the LPGA where she has been plying her trade for the last seven years since debut at age 17. The current season has

been a best-ever for Ashok too, with four top-10 finishes in 10 LPGA starts and over half a million dollars earned in prize money so far.

Between the wins scored by Ashok in February and now by Dagar, it is the first time two Indian women golfers have held titles on the same international circuit in the same year. For all its long history, the men’s professional side has rarely managed to achieve this feat, Arjun Atwal and Jyoti Randhawa doing to on the Asian Tour in 2000, and Jeev Milkha Singh and Atwal on the European Tour in 2008.

The point, as emphasized earlier, is the progress the women’s game is making now in India with far less resources and a much smaller talent pool. For example, the total prize pool for the women’s pro tour this season is Rs 1.9 crore. Last year, the men’s Professional Golf Tour of India put Rs 18 crore on the table, and while final figures are not available for the ongoing season that is currently in summer recess, it is expected to be substantially more.

The Golfshire result was the Hero WPGT’s first for an amateur this season though in the previous week, Keerthana Rajeev took second place at the Clover Greens course in Hosur. Last season, Avani Prashanth and Sneha Singh of Hyderabad were the two amateur winners with the latter thereafter turning professional and already winning twice this year.

With Prashanth growing in stature – her resume includes the Queen Sirikit Cup earlier this year – and planning a professional debut soon, more good times are on the horizon for women’s golf in India given the way Ashok and Dagar have already performed this season.