Shubhankar Sharma brings his ‘A’ game to record best finish an Indian at The Open | Golf News

It’s cold, the wind is picking up, it’s raining, and the lone Indian grinding it out on a century-old British course is mentally working out the physics and geometry of golf.Shubhankar Sharma takes a step to the left, another to the right, then stands right behind the ball, squinting at the hole that’s 36 feet away. He’s reading lines, mapping angles, studying slopes, and figuring out the force needed to make the ball roll over the heavy, deceptive green and sink a sinuous putt.“The Open tests your imagination,” Shubhankar’s father Mohan Lal says. “And it suits Shubhankar. He is an art.”
In the last four days, the ‘art’ was at the top of his art. Shubhankar opts for a stinger – a low, powerful shot with plenty of forward spin. And the outcome is a miraculous 36-feet putt. The ball embarks on a trajectory that’s at least a foot to the left of the hole as it runs down the slope of the Royal Liverpool course with considerable velocity.

For a moment, it threatens to go past the hole before slowing down suddenly, takes a sharp left turn, hangs agonisingly on the edge of the cup and at last, drops in for an unbelievable eagle on the fifth hole during Round 3 on Saturday.
The audacity of the shot left even Major winner and former world number one Jason Day amazed. “We did like a f pump,” Shubhankar said later. “He was like, ‘thanks for the line’.”

Perfectly judged.
As the rain starts to fall, Shubhankar Sharma makes a move with an eagle. pic.twitter.com/ILDY3yXMkA
— The Open (@TheOpen) July 22, 2023
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It was this combination of courageous shot making, ability to grind and staying calm while battling nature’s elements that led Shubhankar to record the highest finish an Indian at The Open, the oldest golf tournament in the world, on Sunday.
Shubhankar finished tied 8th at Hoylake with a total of five-under, bettering Jyoti Randhawa’s tied 27th in 2004. It’s also the second-best result an Indian at a Major, behind Anirban Lahiri’s tied-fifth finish at the PGA Championship in 2015.
“Take a bow, Shubhankar,” Lahiri tweeted. “I hope youngsters back home stayed up and watched.”
Had they indeed stayed up and watched, the young Indians would have seen one of them dishing out a fine exhibition of gritty golf in testing conditions. Especially on Sunday, when it poured all day and Shubhankar was the only player in a star-studded field to enjoy a bogey-free round, recording 17 pars and a birdie on the 15th.
All this, as he celebrated his 27th birthday bang in the middle of the tournament feasting on the humble rajma chawal, and being surrounded his entire family, who had rented an apartment five minutes away from the course, and not too far away from the fabled Penny Lane.
Timely boost
For Shubhankar, who jumped 111 spots on the world rankings table to 165, last weekend could be a springboard he sorely needed after seemingly stagnating. He emerged on the scene as an ambitious 21-year-old who won twice on the World Tour, finished tied 9th at a World Golf Championship event in Mexico, was the youngest in the world’s top-100 and briefly led the European Tour rankings during three dizzying months in 2018.
Since then, his career has been a staccato. In the four tournaments heading into The Open, Shubhankar missed the cut in three and finished 58th at the Scandinavian Mixed in Stockholm last month.
In Liverpool, ‘everything fell into place’ just at the right time, his coach Jesse Grewal says.
“This time,” Grewal tells The Indian Express, “what we did differently was to come here a month ago to prepare.”
Grewal says that usually for Majors, they reached the venue on a Sunday, trained Monday onwards and began competing on Thursday. “This time, we decided to prepare beforehand to understand the course well. So, we came here in June and had three practice rounds. It helped us make a plan of what to do on every hole. We had a clear idea of what we were going to do,” Grewal says.
A lot of emphasis was laid on Shubhankar’s putting game, Grewal adds. But the conditions were different last week compared to June, when it was dry. “This time, the ball wasn’t rolling much on the fairways and the greens were slow. So, he had to get his yardage right. To his credit, his mind is clear on what he has to do and it all sort of came together during the tournament despite the conditions being difficult,” he says.
The prep before the tournament was complemented the calming influence of his parents and ser, who’d come to Liverpool and walked with him for the 72 holes. A quintessential family man, Shubhankar felt ‘relaxed’ with everyone around, his father says.
“I have not seen him play better golf than he did this week, especially Sunday,” Mohan Lal says. “This is definitely the toughest tournament because the venue keeps changing and the golf is on links courses. They are natural courses; not artificially made. This is exemplified their locations – beaches, wind, rain, sloping greens, steep bunkers and what not. In the US, it is mostly about the method. Here, it is more about imagination.”
And the art let his imagination run wild. The 36-feet putt was a testimony to it.