LAHORE: Lahore dominated Karachi on the first day of the Legends Classic Golf event at the Royal Palm Golf and Country Club course here on Friday.

Thirty-four golfers each from Karachi and Lahore are competing in the event after forming 17 pairs apiece at this three-day event being contested on scrambles match play system.

The Lahore pairs clinched eleven matches as against four matches won by the Karachi pairs while two matches ended as draw.

After teeing off, as the game progressed noticeable was the nervousness of the Karachi players, who somehow got tied down by the multitude of trees and the heavy rough. In Karachi they are not used to so much greenery.

As for the Lahore champions they felt at ease on their home course and played steadily placing their shots strategically and never straying from the fairways.

With eleven wins, Lahore concluded the day with full honours accumulating 12 points as against five points earned by the Karachi team.

Now the two teams move to the Defence Raya Golf Course where they play the four ball format matches on Saturday and singles on Sunday.

For Karachi the victorious pairs were Sibtain Haji/Qazi Amir Hussain, Rizwan Feroze/M.A.Mannan, Ahmed Siddiqi/Bilal Habib, and Adnan Afridi/Salman Qureshi.

The two Karachi pairs who levelled their matches were Azhar Haji/Rashid Malik and Asif Parekh/Shaharyar Shah. Teams get one point for outright victory and half point for a drawn match. Thus Karachi ended up with 5 points.

The victorious Lahore pairs included Faisal Iqbal/Farid Malik, Usman Cheema/Khawaja Ahsan, Waleed Zubair/Taimoor Shabbir, Shahid Iqbal/Sharjeel Awan, Amer Mehmood/Faisal Sayid, Omer Salamat/Sardar Murad, Dildar Hussain/Tariq Mushtaq, Rizwan Shafi/Haris Naseer, Gen(r) Tariq Rai/Waqar Butt, Ahmed Gulzar/Abdul Basit and Ramzan Sheikh/Abdul Basit.

The Lahore pairs who levelled their matches were Asad Amin/Tariq Misbah and Syed Mohammad Umair/Ibrahim Qureshi.

By virtue of these victories Lahore Team fetched 12 points.

Published in Dawn, November 29th, 2014