Ashok, Digvijay advance, Harmeet Kahlon ousted in SRF Golf Matchplay

New Delhi, Mar 11 (UNI) Defending champion and top seed Ashok Kumar came back from being three down against Kolkata's Ranjit Singh to win one up in the first round of the SRF All India Professional Golf Matchplay Championship here today.

Ranjit won the first, third and fifth holes but Ashok bounced back by winning the eighth, 13th, 15th and 16th holes.

The big upset of the day was Shaurya Singh's one up win against fourth seed Harmeet Kahlon. Shaurya won the first, third, fifth, sixth, eighth and 11th holes but lost out to Harmeet on the ninth, 10th, 12th, 15th and 17th.

Shaurya finally registered a well-deserved win when Harmeet missed a four feet putt on the 18th that could have taken the match to a playoff.

Second seed Digvijay Singh secured a berth in the round of 32 with a two up triumph against Jaideep Patwardhan.

Third seed Gaganjeet Bhullar also made it to the next round as he won three and two against Gast Ram.

Fifth seed Lam Chih Bing of Singapore prevailed over Dinesh Kumar four and three. Lam Chih Bing bagged the fifth, sixth, eighth, ninth, 12th and 14th holes and lost the fourth and 13th.

Rahul Ganapathy cruised to a four and three victory over Bhoop Singh. Ganapathy advanced as a result of wins on the third, ninth, 12th and 15th.

Mukesh Kumar secured a birth in the second round after he defeated M Dharma six and five.

Sixth seed C Muniyappa and seventh seed Shamim Khan also booked their places in the second round.

While C Muniyappa won four and three against Sheeraz Kalra, Shamim Khan defeated Sachin Nigade two and one.

In a close encounter Bangalore's R Srinivas defeated Sanjay Kumar on the second play-off hole (20th hole). In other playoffs Uttam Singh Mundy beat Deepinder Singh Kullar (19th hole), Vivek Bhandari beat Rohit Chaudhary (19th hole), Himmat Singh Rai beat Mohd Islam (20th hole) Gurbaaz Mann beat Indrajit Bhalotia (19th hole) and Ali Sher beat Gurki Shergill (19th hole).

UNI HSB RAR RS1933