Lahiri off to a flying start with bogey-free 66 in Sanderson Farms golf

Oct 2: Anirban Lahiri’s hot putter got him off to a flying start in the opening round of the Sanderson Farms Championship in Mississippi, US. A bogey free 66, one of his best starts in last four years, saw him Tied-fourth and two shots behind co-leaders Charley Hoffman and Jimmy Walker, who started from different ends of the course, but came back with similar results of 8-under and Matt Gligic of Canada is third at 7-under.

Lahiri knows he needs a good result each week to get into the following week and he is embracing the pressure. Playing at the Sanderson Farms for only the second time, Lahiri said the Country Club of Jackson reminds him of golf courses he grew up playing on in Asia. He took advantage of that comfort to put himself in a strong position. He will need another Top-10 like last week to get a start next week at the Shriners Hospital Open in Vegas.

He said, “I find myself in a weird place in terms of my eligibility. You know, I obviously haven’t had very good seasons the last couple of years and I missed a bunch of events. I have to just kind of play my way into events, and that’s really the first priority, to have the right kind of schedule, to have a full go at the golf courses that I like to play and just get back to contending or getting into contention. So there’s a lot of those goals and they really motivate you. I haven’t been in this situation for a long, long time. It’s been a wake-up call, and so far I’m responding to it positively.”

Lahiri, who had had two birdies on the front nine and four more on the back nine, besides missing a couple of other makeable ones, said, “It was lots of good combinations. Obviously confidence is up. I feel like I’m playing really well. I like this golf course. Last year was my first time here. It reminds me a lot of the tracks I grew up playing in Asia. Probably not greens this quick, but similar to look at.”

The highlight was his excellent form around the greens. It included a brilliant 24-foot birdie putt on Par-3 seventh and chip-in birdie from the fringe 31 feet away on par-4 12th.

Lahiri found only half the fairways but reached 15 of the 18 the greens in regulation and whenever he was more than 15-20 feet from the pin, he did well to get into tap-in range and made no  mistakes.

He did miss a nine-footer on Par-4 second and a 10-footer for birdie on Par-5 fifth. Yet the work he has put into his game during the lockdown is beginning to pay off. Later his 26-foot putt for birdie on 16th stopped an inch short on the lip of the hole.

Lahiri, who got into the field for this week on the strength of his Top-10 finish last week, has been trending well since the start of the new 2020-21 season. He was T-36 at Safeway Open and his Tied-6th at Corales Championship last week for his first Top-10 finish in almost two years.

Asked if he feels the pressure of doing well week to week to get into events, Lahiri added, “I don’t know (if it is) hard or easy, I’m just doing the same things that I did last week and the week before that in Napa, as well. I’m just trying to stick to my process and the results are coming right now. I’m swinging it good, feel like I’ve got a good grip on my putter right now. I feel confident. I guess it’s good to have that motivation to get to Vegas now, I guess, or maybe even better.”

On the turnaround in form, Lahiri felt, “I think the lockdown really helped to start. I think the lockdown really helped me. I was in India for five months. I left pretty much the Monday after Bay Hill to go play the Hero Indian Open and then we got locked in. They closed the borders down. So I was there for a long time. Spent about 40 days straight with my coach (Vijay Divecha) before I came back out here, and I got back to the basics, undid a lot of the bad habits that had crept into the game and just tried to clean up the game, clean up the mind and just get really.”

He added, “It’s not about finding things (like putting). Most of the stuff is already in there, otherwise you wouldn’t have gotten here to start with. But along the way a lot of things get overridden on it. So it’s not so much about, oh, I found it, it’s about removing some of the garbage, at least in my case. There was a lot of that that had crept in, both mentally and technically, and am still trying to clean that up.”

What if he does not get into Top-10 and can play next week in Vegas, Lahiri simply said, “I will go back and have a great week with my family and come back out in Bermuda and try and contend that week.”

But for now, the Sanderson Farms Championship and adding another good result is uppermost in his mind.

 

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