Charles Schwab Challenge: Anirban Lahiri aims to regain form, improve position on PGA-Sports News , Firstpost

File image of Anirban Lahiri. Reuters

Fortworth: India’s Anirban Lahiri tees up at the USD 7.5 million Charles Schwab Challenge this week with an aim to regain form and improve his position on the PGA.

The 33-year-old Indian, who has now been on the PGA Tour since 2016, has yet to make his breakthrough and has now hit a rough patch in 2021.

After a promising start to the new 2020-21 PGA Tour season late last year when he made all four cuts and had a Top-10 finish in Dominican Republic, Lahiri has been somewhat patchy in his 10 starts in 2021, where he has made only three cuts, including a fifth place in Texas Open.

While his on-course showing was disappointing Lahiri, who missed a lot of events in 2020 when he was stranded in India, also had to deal with a bout of COVID-19 , which caused him to miss at least two events — the Valspar Championships and the Wells Fargo.

Now he hopes to make up for the lost time as 10 events plus two Majors and a WGC are what are left in the run-up to the FedEx Cup play-offs. Lahiri has had to miss the play-offs in 2019 and 2020 after playing in them in 2017 and 2018.

Lahiri will be well served by some pleasant memories of a tied-6th place finish at the Colonial Country Club in 2016. The tournament was then called Dean &. Deluca.

Lahiri”s last two victories came in a period of three weeks in 2015, when he won the Malaysia Open and the Hero Indian Open.

On Thursday, Lahiri will be in the first group to tee off on Thursday as he goes out with Lucas Glover and Harold Varner III.

The 50-year-old Phil Mickelson, who stunned all with his PGA Championships win last week, Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas and Justin Rose are among the big names in the field this week.

Daniel Berger returns to lead the field of 121 as looks to join Ben Hogan as the only player to defend at Colonial.