Yuvraj's flawless 65 takes him to joint lead at PGTI Players Championship

Yuvraj Singh Sandhu registered the lowest score of the day, an error-free seven-under 65, to move up five spots into the joint lead after the third round of Rs 50 lakh TATA Steel PGTI Players Championship golf tournament on Thursday. Chandigarh-lad Yuvraj (70-67-65) shared the top spot at 14-under 202 with Bangladesh's Md Zamal Hossain Mollah (67-66-69), who produced a three-under 69 on Thursday, his second straight bogey-free round, to gain one spot on the leaderboard. Gurugram-based duo of Kartik Sharma (67-69-67) and Shivendra Singh Sisodia (68-63-72) lurked one shot behind in tied third place at 13-under 203.

Kartik and Shivendra kept themselves in contention with third round scores of 67 and 72 respectively. Angad Cheema returned a 70 to occupy fifth place at 10-under 206. Yuvraj, currently second on the PGTI Order of Merit with a win and three other top-10s in 2022 so far, had a cold start as he missed a short putt for a birdie on the second.

However, he finally made breakthroughs on the fourth and ninth where he rolled in birdies from five feet. The 25-year-old, who has been in red-hot form since the latter half of 2021, then revved up the engine on the back-nine where he collected five more birdies. Yuvraj produced a great second shot from the rough to set up a five-feet birdie conversion on the 12th and then nearly holed-out his approach on the 15th on a day the pin positions were the toughest even as there was lesser wind.

The two other Chandigarh golfers in the top-10 were defending champion Karandeep Kochhar (68) and Ranjit Singh (69). Karandeep was placed seventh at eight-under 208 while Ranjit was in eighth position at seven-under 209. Chandigarh's Abhijit Singh Chadha, who was overnight third, dropped to