Atwal leads Wills Eastern Open

Living up to his top billing, Arjun Atwal fired a four under 68 to take sole possession of the lead at the end of the first round of the Rs. One million Wills Eastern Open golf tournament.

Fresh from his sojourn overseas on the Davidoff Asian Tour and a reasonably quality finish at the Malaysian Open, Arjun revelled in conditions he calls most familiar. Going home to family and friends brings out the best in this journeyman and he showed he had lost none of the touch displayed around the RCGC when he annexed the Wills Indian Open in 1998. With birdies on three of the first five holes he was firing on all cylinders. A solitary bogey on the long 7th did not really affect his momentum and with birdies on the 15th and 18th he was pleased with his opening round effort.

Digvijay Singh was the player who kept Arjun in his sights with a quality round of 70 and as many as six players closed with 71s. Prominent among this list are local favourites Basad Ali and Indrajit Bhalotia as well as the current Hero Golf champion Amritinder Singh. Vijay Kumar, who has come off back-to-back victories in the Patna and Dhaka leg of the Wills Sport Golf Tour, had a sedate par round of 72 with a double bogey on the 14th, spoiling his card.

Mukesh Kumar and Shiv Prakash, who are in the hunt for the Order of Merit honours are a further stroke adrift at 73 with Feroz carding a disappointing 74.

The field certainly has a great deal of depth and the projected cut score for the top 50 players is 9 over.

The best amateur on view was Rahil Ganjee, who had an indifferent round by his high standards of 74. The golf course has always been hard to conquer and while the weather gods were kind in keeping the mercury down the players found it hard to recover dropped strokes.

As mentioned by Indrajit Bhalotia, "The beauty of the Royal Calcutta is that all departments of your game need to be on song as accurate driving alone does not set up good scores. Once you drop a stroke, birdies are hard to come by other than on the two par 5s so this is really a true test of golf."

Sentimental favourite Rohtas Singh was more eloquent in his summation even though he won the Pro-Am yesterday.

"This golf course is wonderful when you are in your 20’s for me now at almost 50 it is just too long -- I wish the over 45’s could play from the regular tees."

SCORES: 68_ Arjun Atwal; 70_ Digvijay Singh; 71_Amritinder Singh, Basad Ali, I Bhalotia, Jaiveer Virk, Pappan, Ranjit Singh; 72_ Vijay Kumar; 73_Mukesh Kumar, Rafiq Ali, Shiv Prakash, SSP Chowrasia. Rajiv Kumar , Raju Ali