Daily Times

RAWALPINDI: Pakistan top golfer Shabbir Iqbal won the 29th COAS Open Golf Championship that concluded at the marvelous Rawalpindi Golf Club here on Sunday. The championship surfaced as a resplendent golfing event that attracted as many as 658 contestants, all battling it out spiritedly for a favorable outcome that would fetch them a commendatory spot on the winners stand and seek an award from the eminent one of the national golf scene, Lt Gen (r) Mian Muhammed Hilal Hussain, the President of the Pakistan Golf Federation. As for the championship itself, while the principal and foremost encounters were in the professionals and amateur categories, the allied events were quite a few and included junior professionals, senior professionals, senior amateurs, veterans, subsidiary, boys and women also. While stars of the national golf scene competing for huge cash prizes in the professional section and highly proficient amateurs on the lookout for preferred rankings remained in the spotlight through excellent application of skills, the efforts of those competing in allied events stood eclipsed. Gallant one of the professionals section was the dauntless Shabbir who once again outrivaled his adequately capable adversaries through high calibre merited play. All this infallibility yielded rounds of 68, 68 and 65 and an overall championship aggregate of 201, fifteen under par which in golfing terms can be categorised as peerless, sublime and awe-inspiring. Talat Ijaz secured the runner-up prize with scores of 67, 69 and 71 and an overall aggregate of 207, nine under par which represented phenomenal golfing handiwork.

And chivalrous one in the amateur section was Hussain Hamid, a dexterous one from Royal Palm who amazed even his compeers by tackling the golf course challenges in a remarkable and potent manner. His score of gross 67 elevated him to the echelon of COAS amateur champion. His overall aggregate score was 219 and he defeated the highly talented seventeen years old Umar Khalid of Karachi by two strokes. Salman Jehangir of Lahore Gymkhana ended up third with an aggregate score of 222.