Parco Reale di Monza, 17-09-2015
Kapur off to splendid start in Italy with seven-under-65, placed tied second, two off lead
India's Shiv Kapur enjoyed a promising start to his Italian campaign when he opened with a seven-under-par 65 to trail Belgian leader Nicolas Colsaerts by two shots at the 72° OPEN D'ITALIA presented by DAMIANI on Thursday.
The Asian Tour winner traded eight birdies and a bogey to take a share of second place with Italy's Francesso Molinari and Sweden's Kristoffer Broberg at the Golf Club Milano.
“If you had said at the start of the day, '65′, I would have bitten your hand off.
“It's a good start, I got the best of the conditions this morning and the breeze kind of picked up on the back nine but I managed to make most of my birdies on the back so I'm pretty pleased with the start,†said Kapur.
While it was an encouraging round, the Indian, who has been struggling for a large part of the season, prefers to stay grounded and focus his attention on his game for the rest of the week.
“I felt like my game has been coming close but I've been getting frustrated with a lack of results. It's nice when things click together but we've still got a long way to go. A good start is only less than halfway done but hopefully I can carry on with the same sort of mindset into the next three days,†said Kapur, whose best finish this season was a tied-11th placing in Thailand earlier in the year.
“I've been out here for 10 years now and seen so many ups and downs. You realise you're going to see more downs than ups and sometimes you just have to look back and reflect and be your own best cheerleader at times.
“It gets hard, it's easy to get down on yourselves and I've been trying to stay positive. The last three or four months haven't been how I wanted them to be but it's always nice to finish with a flourish (rather) than finish poorly so I'm hoping to have a positive end to the season,†added Kapur.
Jeev Milkha Singh returned a 68 for equal 22nd place while SSP Chawrasia was tied for 38th on 69.
At the Web.Com's Small Business Connection Championship, the second in a series of four events, where the top-25 finishers, will earn PGA Tour cards for next season, Anirban Lahiri of India shot an even-par-72 to be tied 71st on day one.
At the Asian Development Tour's PGM Bukit Jawi Championship, India's Feroz Singh Garewal (72-71) was tied 23rd at one-under-143 after round two.
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