Shubhankar Sharma styled a 6-under-par 31-35=66 to total 12-under 204 through 54 holes of the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth, good for T3 alongside Justin Rose and Christiaan Bezuidenhout, but three adrift of leaders Jon Rahm and Danny Willett.
This is proving to be quite the tournament debut for the Indian, who two years ago was not even a European Tour member and in May 2018 had enjoyed such a sensational start to the year that he had been vaulted into accepting invites on the PGA Tour so missed this event. Alas there was a reaction to that success and he hasn’t recorded a top 20 on a main tour since he was T6 in the Hong Kong Open last November. Now he is on the brink of turning that around. He ticked seven of the first 12 (2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10 and 12), but dropped shots at the sixth and 13th. He righted the ship by draining a 16’0" birdie at the 16th before getting up and down for birdie from short of the par-5 17th. However a duffed chip cost him another dropped shot at the 18th. “The whole year has been a bit slow, but haven’t felt like I played really bad,” he said. “I was reading the greens really well today and I’m learning more about Wentworth every day.”