Chandigarh's 16-year-old Karandeep Kocchar kept his nerves till the end as he won the fifth playoff hole against Delhi's Arjun Prasad to take the second day lead at the 115th Amateur Golf Championship of India here today.
Karandeep will now be seeded on top in the Matchplay format of the tournament that will be played from tomorrow at the Classic Golf Resort.
Teenager Karandeep, who finished tied-14 at the 2015 Asia-Pacific Junior Golf Championship in Taiwan, carded two-under 70 while Arjun, winner of the 2015 Eastern India Junior Championship, had three-under 69. Both Karandeep and Arjun returned with two days identical scores of four-under 140.
India's number one amateur Aman Raj of Patna shot a remarkable five-under 67 for the two days total of two-under 142 to share the third position along with Faridabad's Priyanshu Singh and Mysore's Yashas Chandra, the overnight leader.
Thailand's Napong Sriparsit was sixth after shooting one-under for the total of one-under 143.
In the team championship that was happening concurrently, the Indian team represented by Samarth Dwivedi (145) and Aman Raj (142) clinched the title with a combined total of 287.
A total of 32 players have made the cut for the knockout stage after six players were tied for the 29th place. Amongst those four players were selected after the first play off-hole. The tournament will conclude on December 20 with the 36-hole final.
