Photo-Worldwide Golf

Harpal Singh Bedi in Jakarta

Young Rayhan Thomas is the best ranked Indian in the men’s golf team which begins its Asian Games campaign here on Thursday, but his two other team mates Aadil Bedi and Hari Mohan , have shown excellent form in recent weeks.

The fourth Indian, Kshitij Naveed Kaul, has spent a lot of time in Jakarta getting used to the golf, as did the others earlier on at the Pondok Indah Golf Course in Jakarta.

The golf course looks extremely forgiving with wide fairways and very little rough, meaning the scores should be low. The weather has been perfect and the early starters will have a definite advantage.

India has a young men’s team with most of them in their teens. The men’s team is represented by 18-year-old Rayhan Thomas, Kshitij Naved Kaul (17), Aadil Bedi (17) and Harimohan Singh (24), while the women’s team has Sifat Sagoo (17), Ridhima Dilawari (20) and Diksha Dagar (17).

The Indian team won a bunch of medals when the sport made its debut at the 9th Asian Games in New Delhi in 1982 with Gold-Silver in individuals and the gold in team event. The next medal came from Shiv Kapur in 2002 at Busan, when he the individual gold. In both 2006 (Anirban Lahiri, Gaganjeet Bhullar, Chiragh Kumar and Joseph Chakola) and in 2010 (Rashid Khan, Rahul Bajaj, Abhijit Chadha and Abhinav Lohan) the Indians won a team silver.

At the 2014 Games, India narrowly missed a medal.

Though Rayhan at No. 19 is the third highest world ranked player in the field, Bedi and Hari Mohan have shown fine form while playing alongside professional. The duo finished T-22 at the recent Take Solutions Masters in Bangalore. Bedi was also T-14 at LP Cup, an ADT event, also in Bangalore.

The men have a great chance to grab a medal, but the young women’s team Sifat Sagoo, Diksha Dagar and Ridhima Dilawari will find the going tough against the likes of South Korea, Thailand and China.
Indian women have never won a medal at the Asian Games.