NEWS FROM THE TOUR VANS
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A two-time winner and 2018 rookie of the year on the DP World Tour, India’s Shubhankar Sharma seemed to be a rising star in the golf world. He even finished T8 in the 2023 Open Championship at Hoylake.
But Sharma went into his home country’s DP World India Championship in desperate need of a season-saving result in hopes of retaining his full status on the European circuit.
Sharma needed to climb dramatically in his final two starts of the season in India and Korea from 185th into the top 110 in the Race to Dubai standings to retain his card. The 2024 Paris Olympian endured a drought of 17 consecutive missed cuts from the Hero Indian Open in March until finishing T61 in the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship and T47 in the Open de España the two weeks prior to the DP World India Championship.
Bookend 74s at Delhi Golf Club cost Sharma the result he needed, finishing T56 to climb to only 177th in the Race to Dubai heading to Korea for the Genesis Championship, where he missed the cut.
The culprit for his drastic decline, he contends, was a slew of changes in his equipment earlier this season including his irons, shafts and ball. He went through four different iron sets this year and away from the Titleist 714 CB irons he had much of his success with as well as at least six shaft changes. He gamed Callaway Apex CB irons in Madrid, where he ranked atop the field in approach play in the second round “which gave me a lot of confidence,” he said.
In India, he switched to a Srixon ZX Mk II 3-wood.
“I’ve been on a journey with my clubs this year,” Sharma explained in India. “I changed my clubs, the clubs that I played for 10 years at least, if not more. So, once you change the shafts in the clubs, it takes some time to get used to them, and it’s been a struggle this year with that.
“The game hasn’t felt bad, but I just haven’t gotten any consistency with my process on the course because it’s just been a lot of change. But now I feel like I’m at the end of my exercise. So, if I can say, I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I feel like the game is coming back now.”
Sharma said he traveled to the U.S., Thailand and Dubai in search of equipment answers. “You see something on the range and you take it to the course and it’s different,” he said. “Unless you play it in the tournament you don’t really know the tendencies.”
The DP World India Championship was played on a Delhi Golf Club course that’s so narrow and twisty that it essentially took the driver out of everyone’s bag. Rory McIlroy hit one in a practice round just for giggles, but he benched his TaylorMade Qi10 driver for the week – which is like taking away his biggest superpower over his peers.
“I’d say that the next time I hit my driver will be in Abu Dhabi,” McIlroy quipped ahead of the tournament. “I just don’t feel like the risk is worth the reward. I’d rather leave myself two or three clubs back and hit a 7-iron into a par-4 instead of hitting a wedge where if you just get it off-line here and the ball is gone. … You can rack up a very big number very quickly.
“So being strategic and being smart with your play off the tee, especially, is very important. … You just keep hitting it down the middle, hit it 260, 250, 260 every single time, and if you do that, then you can do very well around this golf course.”
It was Tommy Fleetwood who dealt with the unusual challenge the best and walked away with the win in India, extending his torrid late-season run of success that included winning the Tour Championship and FedEx Cup at East Lake and leading the European team’s Ryder Cup victory with a 4-1 record that was better than anyone on either side at Bethpage Black.
At Delhi Golf Club, Fleetwood went out with a TaylorMade R7 Quad mini driver set at 13 degrees. But he was tempted to use it on only one hole on the course (No. 18), with his TaylorMade Qi35 5-wood (17.5 degrees) serving as the workhorse at the top end of his bag along with a Qi10 9-wood (22.5 degrees).
“It’s just such a unique challenge for all of us,” Fleetwood said of the course. “I haven’t hit more than a 5-wood. The one hole where I hit more is 18, but you get to that and you’re like, ‘Well, I haven’t hit one, and I don’t really feel that comfortable with it.’
“Hitting off the fairway makes a huge difference and you have to control your iron play. You have to be patient, and you have to be strategic. And I really like that about golf courses when we get to play those. I feel like it puts me in a good mindset I feel like when I go on the range … I can practice for what the course requires.”
Scott Michaux