Shubhankar Sharma became the youngest Indian to clinch the Asian Tour Order of Merit on Saturday after a ground-breaking year of achievements.
He won it even before the finish of the last two events of the 2018 season.
Shubhankar, who has led the Habitat for Humanity Order of Merit from February, kept his nose ahead all the time.
After finishing tied sixth at the Hong Kong Open, which was his 11th start in a row and 15th in 16 weeks from the Open de France in June-July, Shubhankar skipped the Queen’s Cup, Mauritius Open and the South African Open, despite a late challenge being mounted by South Africa’s Justin Harding.
Another feather
As Harding missed the cut this week, any chance of him overtaking Shubhankar also ended and the Indian added another feather to his cap.
Shubhankar, 22, became the fifth and the youngest Indian to win the Asian Tour Order of Merit.
He joins Jyoti Randhawa (2002), Arjun Atwal (2003), Jeev Milkha Singh (2006 and 2008) and Anirban Lahiri (2015).
None of the previous Indian winners of the Asian Tour Order of Merit were below 30 when they reached the top, while Shubhankar is just 22. Jeev is the only one in the list to win the Merit honours twice.
“The Asian Tour Order of Merit was something very significant for me, as were many of the other milestones, but with this I have followed in the footsteps of golfers like Jyoti Randhawa, Arjun Atwal, Jeev Milkha Singh and Anirban Lahiri, all of whom I look up to and who have been very encouraging to me,” said Shubhankar.
He is due to make his final start of 2018 at the BNI Indonesia Masters next week in Jakarta, where he will also be officially crowned as Asian Tour’s No. 1.
