Abu Dhabi, Oct 26 (PTI) India’s Avani Prashanth fired a second straight bogey-free round of 4-under 68 to lie tied second after the second round of individual section at the Women’s World Amateur Team Championships (WWATC) golf tournament here on Thursday.
Avani is now 8-under but two shots behind Navaporn Soontreeyapas of Thailand, who shot a brilliant 7-under 65 with eight birdies and one bogey.
Winner of the individual honours at the Queen Sirikit Cup, Avani, who rose to 69th in World Amateur golf rankings following a fifth place finish in the Hero Women’s Indian Open, could move into top-50 if she tops the individual section this week at WWATC.
In the last two years Avani has been phenomenal. Her 39 starts have yielded 11 wins and nine other top-10 finishes for a total of 20 top-10 finishes.
Two of the wins have come against professionals, once each in India and Europe. Five of her 20 top-10s have been in pro events, two of them being full field Ladies European Tour events in Kenya and India.
The other two Indians girls in fray, Mannat Brar (72-74) at T-49 and Nishna Patel (75-80) at T-94, are way down on the leaderboard.
With top two scores being counted for the team title, India who were fourth when play finished on the first day, have now slipped to T-7. Thailand, Australia and Spain are tied for the first place and Korea are fourth. United States and England are tied fifth with India, Germany and Canada at tied seventh spot.
Starting late in the afternoon, Avani birdied Par-3 first, Par-5 eighth and Par-3s on 12th and 15th but also missed a few other chances.
“Coming back without a bogey for a second day in a row is something I am very pleased about,” said Avani, who is tied with Korea’s Kyorim Seo (69-67).
Navaporn is the winner of the Singapore Open amateurs and was a member of the gold medal-winning Thai team at the Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in June this year. Ranked 266th in the world, Navaporn has been a surprise this week, where the field includes 14 of the world’s Top-20.
They include world No. 1 amateur Ingrid Linblad of Sweden and No. 3 Cayetana Fernandez Garcia-Poggio of Spain. The other top-10 stars are Minsol Kim (KOR) at No. 4, Julia Lopez Ramirez (ESP) at No. 5, Anna Davis (USA) at No. 6, Helen Briem (GER) at No. 7, Lottie Woad (ENG) at No. 9 and Meja Ortengren (SWE) at No. 10.
Cayetana is lying fourth with rounds of 68-69 and Anna Davis (73-68), who won the 2022 Augusta National Women’s Amateur and competed in seven LPGA Tour events last year, including three major championships, is T-10.
Minsol Kim (KOR) is T-30th and Lindblad, with 71-75, is way down in T-45th place.
Source: PTI News
