Ashok Kumar, Digvijay advance at SRF Matchplay

NEW DELHI, March 11: Top contenders such as Ashok Kumar, Digvijay Singh, Gaganjeet Bhullar and Lam Chih Bing advanced to the second round of the SRF Professional Matchplay championship but fourth seed Harmeet Kahlon lost out to Shaurya Singh on the opening day of the event.
On a day on which as many as eight matches were decided through playoffs, defending champion and top seed Ashok Kumar came back from being three down against Kolkata's Ranjit Singh to win 1 up.
The big upset of the day was Shaurya Singh's 1 up win against Kahlon.
Shaurya won the first, third, fifth, sixth, eighth and 11th holes but lost on the ninth, 10th, 12th, 15th and 17th. Shaurya finally registered a well-deserved win when Harmeet missed a four feet putt on the 18th that could have taken the match to a play-off.
Second seed Digvijay Singh secured a berth in the round of 32 with a 2 up triumph against Jaideep Patwardhan. Third seed Gaganjeet Bhullar also made it to the next round as he won 3 and 2 against Gast Ram.
Fifth seed Lam Chih Bing of Singapore prevailed over Dinesh Kumar 4 & 3, while Rahul Ganapathy cruised to a 4 & 3 victory over Bhoop Singh.
Mukesh Kumar secured a berth in the second round after defeating M Dharma 6 & 5.
Sixth seed C Muniyappa and seventh seed Shamim Khan also booked their places in the second round.
R Srinivas defeated Sanjay Kumar on the second extra hole. Uttam Singh Mundy, Vivek Bhandari, Himmat Singh Rai, Gurbaaz Mann and Ali Sher also won via play-offs.