Chikka starts firm favourite at Eagleton

 S Chik­k­a­rangappa, the 2015 Rolex Ranking champion, will begin as firm favourite in the Professional Golf Tour of India’s second event -- the PGTI Players Championship -- which will be teed off here at the Eagleton Golf Resort on Tuesaday.

Chikkarangappa who won PGTI’s last event at Eagleton, the TAKE Solutions India Masters 2015, is also fresh from his best-ever Asian Tour finish of tied fourth which he achieved at the Bashundhara Bangladesh Open last week.

The 22-year-old said: “It’s always special to come back and play on my home turf at Eagleton. I have a lot of good memories here. I’ve been in good form of late. I was pleased to achieve my target of winning the Rolex Ranking last year. The Asian Tour result last week provided me with the ideal start to the season.”

Besides Chikkarangapa, the tournament, which carries a prize purse of Rs 30 lakh, will also have in the fray the likes of Udayan Mane (2015 PGTI Emerging Player), Khalin Joshi as well as Gurgaon-based Shubhankar Sharma. All four youngsters will be playing their first PGTI event of the season.

The other top names in the field are current Rolex Ranking leader Feroz Ali Mollah, Mukesh Kumar, Shankar Das, Shamim Khan and Vikrant Chopra among others.

Bengaluru will also be represented by M Dharma (joint second in Rolex Ranking), C Muniyappa (former Indian Open champion), Abhishek Jha, R Murthy and Trishul Chinnappa.

Sri Lanka’s trio of N Thangaraja, Anura Rohana and K Prabagaran will spice up the contest while Ankur Chadha from Gurgaon, Ashish Kumar Gupta from Lucknow, Rishiraj Singh Saini from Panchkula and Vashista S Pawar from Coimbatore will make their Eagleton debut.