Five Indian amateurs to tee up at Asia-Pacific Amateurs in Dubai

Dubai, Oct 21 (PTI) Rakshit Dahiya along will four other golfers will look to make an impact and gain valuable experience when the 16th Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship gets underway here on Thursday.

The hopes would be high from Dahiya, who has played the elite amateur event before, while the others, Anshul Mishra, Ranveer Mitroo, Raghav Gulati and Harman Sachdeva, would look to gain vital learnings.

The Championship returns to Dubai for the first time after 2021.

No Indian has won the title, though Rayhan Thomas, now a professional, was runner-up in 2018 in Sentosa, Singapore.

Rakshit, at 313th in the World Amateur Golf Rankings, is the top Indian, while Anshul is the reigning All India amateur champion. Ranveer, Raghav and Harman too have played a lot of international amateur golf over the past couple of years.

Raghav, who plays college golf in the US and grew up in Dubai, won the Tommy Fleetwood International Pathway Series earlier this year.

Earlier this year, Harman finished runner-up in the Mandiri Ciputra Golfpreneur Junior World Championship in Indonesia. In 2024, he won a World Amateur Golf Ranking event in Indonesia.

The Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship has an attractive prize money with the champion receiving an invitation to the 2026 Masters Tournament and an exemption into The 154th Open next year.

The runner-up will receive an exemption into The Open Qualifying Series while the top-three finishers will receive an exemption into The 131st Amateur Championship.

A field of 120 amateurs from 41 countries will vie for the title in the tournament/ The Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship was created in 2009 as a joint initiative between the APGC, the Masters Tournament and The R&A. Notable past competitors include Hideki Matsuyama, a two-time winner of the Asia-Pacific Amateur and the 2021 Masters champion, and Cameron Smith, champion of The 150th Open.

Other top players who have used the Asia-Pacific Amateur as a springboard to a notable professional career include Australia's Cameron Davis and Min Woo Lee, Chinese Taipei's C.T. Pan, Korea's Si-Woo Kim and Kyoung-Hoon Lee, Japan's Takumi Kanaya and Keita Nakajima and New Zealand's Ryan Fox. PTI Cor AM AM AM