SRF All India Professional Championship 2011

SRF All India Professional -Golf Matchplay Championship 2011.
Gurki Shergill ends Vijay Kumar’s title hopes and R Murthy gets past Sujjan Singh.
Gurki Shergill and R Murthy took the top honours in round two of the SRF All India Professional Golf Matchplay Championship 2011. While Gurki Shergill of Pune caused the biggest upset of the day by ending third seed Vijay Kumar’s title hopes,
Bangalore’s R Murthy got past Asian Tour regular Sujjan Singh.

Gaurav Pratap Singh, Rudresh Sharma and Rafick Ali Mollah also
recorded wins against much higher-ranked opponents at the Delhi Golf
Club (DGC) on Wednesday.Gurki Shergill dominated his match against Lucknow’s Vijay Kumar, a former Indian Open and All India Matchplay champion, from the very
outset. Gurki took control with wins on the second, fifth, seventh and eighth holes to be four ahead at the turn. Vijay pulled one back with a win on the 12th hole but Shergill eventually prevailed 5 & 3 with wins on the 14th and 15th holes against the veteran.Gurki, who is seeded 30th, thus registered his second thumping win of the tournament. The 32-year-old had earlier beaten Anirudh Goyal 5 & 4 in the first round.

Shergill said, “It was a highly satisfying round for me. I was very consistent and hit most of the fairways. I had just one birdie on the fifth, but more importantly, I did not drop a stroke except on the 12th. I did well to drive home the advantage as Vijay was struggling to find the fairways.”

R Murthy’s hot putter helped him defeat Sujjan Singh of Chandigarh by a margin of 3 & 1. Murthy, the 20th seed, sank a couple of 40 feet birdie putts on his way to victory against the 13th seed Sujjan, a winner on the Aircel PGTI.

Top seed Ashok Kumar of the DGC won a close encounter against Bangladesh’s Md Zamal Hossain Mollah as the scoreline read 1 Up in favour of the former.Ashok, the 2007 & 2009 SRF Matchplay champion, will take on Harendra Gupta of Chandigarh in the pre-quarter finals. Gupta’s 7 & 6 win against Sudhir Sharma went down as the biggest victory margin of the day.

Second seed Mukesh Kumar of Mhow coasted to a 5 & 4 win against Toran Bikram Shahi of Nepal.Mukesh will face Rudresh Sharma of the DGC in the round of 16.
Rudresh, the 50th seed, ousted 18th seed Feroz Ali Mollah of Kolkata,another former Indian Open and multiple All India Matchplay champion, with a 1 Up victory.

Noida’s Gaurav Pratap Singh went through to the pre-quarters after
beating the seasoned Sanjay Kumar 3 & 2. Gaurav will meet the DGC’s
Chiragh Kumar in the next round as Chiragh came through 2 & 1 against
Vishal Singh of Jaipur.
Kolkata’s Raju Ali Mollah and Md Islam of Patna were involved in the
closest and longest match of the day. Raju won it on the 22nd hole
(fourth playoff hole). Raju will now come up against his uncle Rafick
Ali Mollah on Thursday.
Rafick Ali Mollah of Kolkata got the better of another Kolkata golfer
Shankar Das with a 4 & 3 margin.
DGC’s Suleman Ali, who defeated defending champion Shamim Khan in
round one, could not repeat his heroics on day two. Suleman lost out
to Shaurya Singh (1 Up) of the Army Golf Course, Delhi. Shaurya will
face R Murthy in the last 16.
Digvijay Singh of the DLF Golf & Country Club cruised past M Dharma of
Bangalore 4 & 3. Digvijay thus set up an encounter against Gurki
Shergill in the next round.
Manav Jaini emerged winner over fellow DGC professional Pappan 4 & 2.
The pre-quarters and quarter finals will be played on Thursday, May 19, 2011.