Shamim Khan wins ONGC Masters

NOIDA: Shamim Khan staved off Amardip Sinh Malik's late challenge to clinch his second successive PGTI title, the ONGC Masters golf tournament on Saturday.
Shamim, the wire-to-wire leader from round one to round four, shot two-under 70 in the final round to end the tournament with a total of 12-under 276.
Amardip Sinh Malik (69) finished three strokes behind Shamim in second place.
"It feels wonderful to win a second straight title on the PGTI. I began confidently by making birdies on the second and fourth. I thought I recovered really well after hitting my tee shot into the bushes on the second," Shamim said.
"From then on I just concentrated on playing solid and was patient even when Malik reduced the lead to one stroke. The pressure was always on him because he had to catch up with me," he added.
Shamim, who had won PGTI's last event in Jamshedpur, earlier this month, now has a total of four professional titles in his kitty.
Two of his four wins have come on the PGTI. The Delhi golfer's win has also propelled him from fourth to second place on the 2007-08 PGTI Order of Merit.
The 30-year-old went past Rahul Ganapathy in total earnings for the season when he picked up the winner's cheque of Rs 3, 23, 300.
Shamim's birdies on the second and fourth helped him maintain his overnight four-stroke cushion till the fifth hole even as his nearest rival Amardip picked up birdies on the first two holes.
The gap between the top two contenders started closing thereafter as Amardip followed up a birdie-bogey on the sixth and seventh with two successive birdies on the eighth and ninth. Shamim, on the other hand, dropped a bogey after finding the water hazard on the par-three 10th hole.
There was a difference of just one stroke between Shamim and Amardip when they approached the 11th tee. Malik dropped a shot when he bogeyed the 11th but the Meerut-based professional came back to within one stroke of the leader by making a birdie on the 14th.
Delhi's Vinod Kumar (69) finished third with a total of six-under 282.