Kruger leads the pack at the Avantha Masters

Dark horse James Barry “Jbe” Kruger is sitting pretty at the top of the Avantha Masters Golf tournament with defending champion S S P Chowrasia languishing somewhere at the bottom of the table.

South African “Jbe” Kruger will try to finish round four the way he finished round three. "I’m going to try to play like how I played today. If it’s meant to be my week, it’ll be mine, so I don’t want to think too far yet,” said Kruger.

The scoreline says that Kruger is reading the greens well and he is trying to let his putts go in because that ultimately decides the winner. Kruger was a bit lucky on the sixth and on the 15th he just drove it a little short of the green and he putt from about 12 metres. Kruger has twice won on the Sunshine Tour: the 2009 Zambia Open and the 2010 Africom Zimbabwe Open. The Avantha Masters would be one of his major tournaments.

Meanwhile, the Indian contingent has been having a rather tough time out on the greens. On Thursday when it teed up many Indian big stars were expected to do well. Chowrasia had injury in his left wrist so it was not possible for him to add one more title to his two European titles and join Jeev Milkha Singh and Arjun Atwal as the only Indians to have won three European tours.

The leader of the Indian contingent, Jeev Milkha Singh is also struggling with his form from the last few months. Other big names who should have impressed with their performance also fell flat. Jyoti Randhawa was out because of injury but Shiv Kapur, Gaganjeet Bhullar, Anirban Lahri, Himmat Rai, Rahil Gangjee, Chirag Kumar should have performed well.

After round 3 the top Indian performer is Anirban Lahiri who aggregated 210. Lahiri was very disappointed with his round 3 performance. “I made a lot of mistakes today. Hit a couple of bad shots off the tee. To sum it up, putted badly. I missed a lot of opportunities. I could have got the momentum early, but I didn’t take my chances. I missed a four-footer for par on fifth; and then I had a three-putt from 15 feet on sixth and just got a par. I went out in one-over. On the back nine I hit water on the 11th. It was a miscalculated tee-shot,” said Lahiri.

Avantha Masters is tri-sanctioned between The European Tour, the Asian Tour and the Professional Golf Tour of India(PGTI). The 1.8 million Euros Avantha Masters is currently the richest tournament in India.