Nagaraj, Nagesh qualify for MercedesTrophy National Final

City golfers Nagaraj MS and Ramesh Nagesh qualified for the Mercedes Trophy National Finals on Day 3 of Bengaluru leg here today.
Nagaraj and Nagesh, who have a handicap CAT (0-17) and handicap CAT (18-24), carded a Nett. Score of 69.2 and 71.4 respectively.
The Mercedes Trophy has so far seen 15 qualifiers who will be competing in the National Finals to be played at the Oxford Golf Resort in Pune from April 4-6.
The best Gross Winner of the day was Rajesh Raju with an excellent round of 75 and there were a host of other prizes on offer to be won on the day.

Prominent winners included N K Lenka who won the Ballantine's Long Drive Challenge with a mammoth drive of 285 yards. Krathish Bopanna won the Mercedes-Benz Closest to Pin contest on hole 2.
In the Mercedes Benz Closest to Pin in Two Shots, Subhashish Ghosh landed the ball at 5.4 ft. from the pin to win the contest on hole no. 11. Shiva Kumar who landed the ball on the line won the Mercedes-Benz Straightest Drive contest.

The format of play was Double Peoria. This unique format of adjusting handicaps of players levels the playing field enabling golfers to have a greater chance of qualifying for the National Finals.

A total of 324 golfers participated over the three days of qualifications for six qualification spots.
The next leg of the MercedesTrophy 2018 will tee off at Hyderabad Golf Association on January 24.
After the Hyderabad leg, it will travel to seven more cities Coimbatore, Kolkata, Chennai, Chandigarh, Gurgaon, Noida and Jaipur.
Forty five winners will be selected from the qualifiers for the National Finals. The qualifiers end on March 11 in Jaipur.
Three winners of the National Finals will then compete against those from tournaments played in 60 countries all over the world in the 29th edition of the MercedesTrophy World Final to be held in Stuttgart, Germany.