Aditi, Diksha drop down as Lydia and Morgane share lead in Olympic golf

Golfer Aditi Ashok

Khel Today Bureau

Paris: It was not one of the best days for the Indian duo, Aditi Ashok (79) and Diksha Dagar (80) as they slipped down the leaderboard at Women’s Olympic golf. Beginning the day in Tied-14^th place, they are nor T-40 and T-42^nd with one more day to go.

Medallist in 2016 and 2020, New Zealand’s Lydia Ko (67) and Swiss Morgane Metraux (66) were joint-leaders after three rounds. Lydia Ko, silver medallist in 2016 and bronze medallist in 2020, when Aditi was fourth, is moving to complete a full set of golf-silver-bronze from three Games.

Ko will hit the Le Golf  National course tomorrow in the lead in search of her first gold medal. Ko shot a four-under 68 to move to nine-under overall.

She was two shots clear of USA’s Rose Zhang and Japan’s Yamashita Miyu, and tied with halfway leader Morgane Metraux of Switzerland.

Metraux had been one-over for the day until an eagle on the 18th saw her sign for a one-under 71.

Also in the hunt are Nelly Korda (70) and first-round leader Céline Boutier (71), tied for seventh at four-under.

Aditi had back-to-back birdies on the fifth and the sixth, after two successive bogeys on the third and fourth. Further trouble came with a double on seventh and bogeys on eighth and the ninth as she turned in 4-over 40.

On the back nine bogeyed 12^th, 13^th and 15^th for 79.

Diksha had five bogeys and a double and no birdies. She had four bogeys in a row from seventh to the 10^th.

Diksha said, “Nothing worked for me today  and I didn’t get many chances and also I missed a lot.”

Aditi, summing up her round, said, “Usually when I’m struggling — if I’m not putting well, at least I’m hitting fairways and greens. Today I didn’t have much of anything. I missed a few fairways and I had some short irons in. Yeah, a couple 3-putts, which is also not usual. Missed a few short putts. Tough course if you just miss a little left or right.”

Asked for the reason, she added, “No reason. I think maybe the wind. I don’t think I’m doing it all three days — got away with it the first couple days.”

On the motivation to keep going, she said, “I think I just had a bad day. Every golfer after a bad round wants to shoot a good round, so that’s what I’ll try and do tomorrow.”