Golf: Aditi finishes tied 4th in Americas Cup

Aditi Ashok logged her third successive top five finish as finished tied fourth at the Mizuho Americas Cup

Jersey City: Aditi Ashok logged her third successive top five finish as finished tied fourth at the Mizuho Americas Cup.

Aditi ended two shots behind the ultimate winner, Rose Zhang, who grabbed the glory in her maiden pro-event.

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It was the first time since Beverly Hanson in 1951 that a player had won on their LPGA debut. Zhang shot 70-69-66-74 to be 9-under and beat Jennifer Kupcho (71-70-69-69) on the second play-off hole.

Hae Ran Ryu was third, while Aditi, Japan’s Ayaka Furue (69) and Korea’s Eun Hee Ji (71) were tied fourth.

Aditi, who started the final day at 9-under, was tied second after the third round.

Twice she reached double digits under-par and was very much on course for a maiden win before floundering towards the end.

Then came a nightmarish stretch with four bogeys in a span of seven holes from the ninth to the 15th. That saw her plummet to six-under.

A fight-back with back-to-back birdies on 16th and 17th got her to 8-under but even at tied third she was running out holes.

Aditi was 8-under and tied third at the 18th tee, but a bogey on that dropped her to 7-under and tied fourth as Hae Ran Ryu (70) was sole third.

The bogey on 18th was costly as she failed to make at least USD 50,000 in prize money but the bigger hurt was missing out on a win that was within her realms till she played the first eight holes during the day.

After just three bogeys over the first three days, Aditi dropped twice that number on the final day against four birdies.

Aditi now has a T-2, T-5 and T-4 in her last three stroke play events on LPGA and she is already in Top-20 of the Road to CME Globe (Order of Merit) and should be ranked higher than previous career-best 49th in world rankings when the new list comes out in a day.