Kolkata: It was the young guns of Indian amateur golf who outshone their experienced rivals as they grabbed the pole position in the strokeplay event of the Tata Steel Eastern India Amateur being played at the Royal Calcutta Golf Club. Leading the youth brigade was Samarth Dwivedi who played a superb round of 3-under par 69 to end up as the winner.

The top 32 from the stroke-play event qualified for the matchplay event which begins on the morrow. In an interesting dual for the final spot, HS Kang made a birdie on the first play-off hole to secure the last and 32nd spot in the main round.

Bangalore lad Trishul Chinnappa shrugged off a first day 76 with a well-compiled 68 to finish second, four shots behind the winner while Aman Raj was tied for the third place along with the joint-leader Gagan Verma. India international and Bangalore lad Syed Saqib Ahmed was in the fifth place along with city-mate BR Raja and last year’s Order of Merit winner Karan Taunk from Jamshedpur.


Breaking from the tradition of finishing on Christmas day the matchplay commences with 32 players in the fray seeded by the performance in the stroke play tournament. Local eyes will be on Viraj Madappa who had an ordinary strokeplay outing but is fondly remembered his last match-play experience where he finished runner-up at the National championship at the same venue.

Top scores after stroke-play event (36 holes)

140 Samarth Dwivedi (71, 69); 144 Trishul Chinnappa (76, 68); 145 Aman Raj (72, 73), Gagan Verma (71, 74); 146 Syed Saqib Ahmed (75, 71), BR Raja (72, 74), Karan Taunk (72, 74); 147 Manu Gandas (76, 71), Viraj Madappa (74, 73); 148 Tutul Ali (72, 76); 149 Ajit Rawat (77, 72), Arjun Sharma (76, 73), Manav Das (75, 74), Jaibir Singh (74, 75), Ainesh Ahluwalia (73, 76), Udayan Mane (73, 76).