Singapore Open Amateur Golf Championship:

Another golfing milestone for Nadaraja Thangaraja

Anuradha Abeysekera

The top Sri Lankan amateur golfer Nadaraja Thangaraja reached another milestone in his golfing career by emerging 1st runner-up in the 65th Singapore Open Amateur Golf Championship which teed off at the spectacular Raffles Country Club golf course in Singapore from July 30 to August 3.

Thangaraja with 2-over 290 (73, 74, 71, 72) was second one stroke away from the Singapore player Joshua Shou who clinched the championship with an excellent performance of 1-over 289 (74, 73, 70, 72). The overall third place went to Australian golfer Kevin Marques with 2-over 290 (73, 72, 72, 73).

Both Joshua and Thangaraja had a superb final round in overcoming third round leader Chang-Heng Lin of Chinese Taipei, who played an awful fourth round and failed to maintain his lead.

Joshua and Thangaraja were five and six strokes behind respectively to Taipei golfer in the end of the third round, but steered to lead in the fourth round with Chang-Heng Lin’s poor play dropping him to overall fifth place with 6- over 78 to finish on 2-over 290 (72, 68, 72, 78). The final round has been a difficult one for all golfers as there were great hindrance from the winds. The 65th Singapore Open Amateur Golf Championship saw over 120 amateur golfers from 16 countries vying for supremacy.

Being the Sri Lanka’s most experienced amateur golfer Thangaraja has shown great improvement in recent international golf tournaments.

2012 has been a great year to date for the 31-year old local champion who started his international triumphs finishing 8th in the Bangladesh Amateur Championship and later bagged the 7th NRC Cup in India and the 51st Pakistan National Amateur Championship last April.