As the calendar turns to June, and with two men’s Majors and one Women’s major in the books, as we did in 2022, India Golf Weekly takes a look at how Indian stars playing on the major pro tours – Aditi Ashok, Anirban Lahiri, and Shubhankar Sharma have performed so far this season.
Aditi Ashok
Aditi Ashok with her father as caddie at Aramco Saudi Ladies International in Feb. 2023
By any measure, 2023 has already been a successful season for Aditi. She started the year on the Ladies European Tour (LET) with a bang by winning the Kenya Open in February, her first win in almost six years. She backed up that result by finishing third and second in her next two events including the lucrative Saudi Open to move to the top of the LET’s Race to Costa Del Sol rankings and continues to lead that three months later despite switching to the LPGA Tour in March with earnings of 500,583 euros, almost double the earnings of Manon De Roey in second place (250,642 euros).
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It took Ashok a while to get going on the LPGA. She missed her first three cuts but rebounded with a tie for second in the JM Eagle LA Championship presented by Plastpro, where she narrowly lost out in a three-way playoff. Two weeks later she finished in a tie for fifth in the Cognizant Founders Cup, which propelled her back into the top-50 in the world rankings after she began the year ranked 195th. Ashok is 15 th on the LPGA money list with earnings of $359,788. That’s already the most money she’s earned on tour in a single season since her debut in 2017, and almost double the prize money she earned on tour all of last year ($178,900). Her combined earnings in Europe and USA is sure to reach the US$1 million mark soon.
The only way the year could get better for her is to win her first LPGA Tour title.
Anirban Lahiri
It’s hard to compare Lahiri’s performances this year with past years because of his switch to the upstart LIV Tour, which has limited fields and 54-hole events. So far this season Lahiri has played in six LIV events (the tour has scheduled 14 events this year) and is 19 th on the individual points list out of 48 players. He has one top-10 finish – a tie for second at LIV Golf Invitational Boston, where he lost out in a three-person playoff.
Since LIV events do not offer world ranking points yet, Lahiri played two events on the Asian Tour, including one that is part of the International Series 2023 (created as part of a deal between the Asian Tour and the Saudi Public Investment Fund). He finished 12 th in the Saudi Invitational in February and second in the Invitational Series Vietnam. The latter result moved his world ranking inside the top-100 and earned him an invitation to the 2023 PGA Championship. Unfortunately, he missed the cut there at Oak Hills
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Lahiri is currently 14th on the Asian Tour money list with earnings of USD 208,250 and 12th on the Invitational Series money list with earnings of USD 173,000. His world ranking currently stands at 105. His next International series appearance will be in UK this August where he will compete with LIV stars like Lee Westwood, Patrick Reed and others.
Shubhankar Sharma
It’s been another erratic year so far for Sharma. He has missed the cut in six of the 12 events played, and his only top-10 finish came in the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship back in January. There are signs of a mini-revival though, as Sharma has made the cut in three of his last four events on the DP World Tour. He finished in a tie for 16th in last week’s KLM Open, which moved him from 70th to 65th in the European Tour’s Race to Dubai. So far this season he has earned 276,094 euros (214,497 in Abu Dhabi), leaving him in 66th place on the money list, while his world ranking is 229, about where he began the year.
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In 2022, Sharma made US$ 1.2mn (₹9.8 crores) in prize money.
At roughly the same point last season, Sharma was in in 17th place on the DP Tour rankings and had virtually qualified for the DP World Tour Championship at the end of the season as one of the top 50 players. This year he still has work to do to break into the top 50.
Based on his statistics for the season, Sharma seems to be having problems with his irons. He ranks 35 th in driving accuracy (%) at 66.36 and 15 th in putting with 1.72 putts per GIR, but 110 th in greens in regulation (%) at 66.31. That last figure is below the tour average of 67.69%, though it represents an improvement from 2022 when he hit 64.76% of greens in regulation.
Hopefully Sharma can fix what has been ailing him the past couple of seasons and return to the form that earned him international prominence a few years ago.
Thanks to his 2022 European Tour ranking, he has secured a spot at this years’ Open Championship being played at Royal Liverpool GC.
Credits:-
Photo – LET Flickr