Silver medalist Aditi Ashok poses with her medal during the presentation ceremony after the Women’s Individual Golf Round 4 event at the Hangzhou Asian Games on October 1, 2023.
| Photo Credit: PTI
Golfer Aditi Ashok was rueful when she found out it was a seven-shot lead that she blew which eventually cost her a maiden gold medal at the Asian Games.
“Seven is worse,” Aditi said with a wistful smile after finishing with an aggregate of 17-under 271 at the West Lake International Golf Course on October 1.
The 25-year-old would have had flashbacks from 2021 when, in the last round of the Tokyo Olympics, she went from a silver medal position overnight to finish fourth in inclement weather conditions.
The parallels would have been there for all to see since Aditi was in pole position until the 16th hole in Hangzhou, where she struggled with her drives against the strong chilly winds coming in from the mountains in the background. In the lead after three rounds of 67, 66 and 61, even Aditi couldn’t have foreseen a terrible round of 77.
Both Aditi and Lin faltered with Thailand’s Arpichaya Yubol, who was in third place for much of the round, closing the gap to the top and finding an opening. A bogey from the Indian on the 15th hole and a double bogey, when she hit it in the water on the 16th allowed Yubol to edge into the lead. Aditi’s bogey on the 15th would have surprised her after she recorded a par and two birdies on the hole in the last three rounds.
By the time Aditi corrected her driver, Yubol, who shot four under par in the last round, had done enough to claim the gold.
She simply put it, “When you hit the water, there’s no way of coming back from it… That was definitely where it unravelled.”
“Definitely anybody would see it as gold lost and it was my tournament to lose and I basically did that. She forced me to play well and I didn’t so that’s definitely a gold lost,” she said.
“The way your mind works is when you are behind you are always thinking of the good stuff you can do to catch up. But when you are leading, I don’t know it’s good or not, but the mind looks at what can go wrong. Not that that’s what happened. I just played bad too. It definitely wasn’t easy knowing that I have to play good or bad to win the tournament,” she said.
Indian challengers Pranavi Urs and Avani Prashanth also had underwhelming final rounds as they finished with 4-under-284 and 3-over 291 as India slipped three positions overnight from leaders to fourth.
