The Players Championship 2022 at TPC Sawgrass: Who is Anirban Lahiri?
Anirban Lahiri has full status on the PGA Tour but has had a difficult season so far.
Anirban Lahiri held the 54-hole lead at The Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass after playing some stunning golf.
The 34-year-old Indian grabbed a 67 in his first round at the Stadium Course and had an off-colour 73 mixed in between another 67.
It left him battling it out for the $3.6million top prize at the richest tournament we have ever seen on the PGA Tour.
There is no denying, Lahiri is not a stand out name on the PGA Tour. But he has status and will be playing a full schedule this year.
He's also won - twice - on the DP World Tour. He has seven victories on the Asian Tour. He turned professional in 2007.
Those two victories came in 2015 at the Maybank Malaysian Open and the Hero Indian Open. He won them both in the same month.
His best finish at a major came when he tied for fifth at the 2005 PGA Championship that Phil Mickelson won in New Jersey.
Lahiri lives in Florida with his wife Ipsa and daughter Tisya. He also competed at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.
PGA Tour record this season
Lahiri has played in 12 events on the PGA Tour in 2022.
He has made only five cuts and earned $105,226.
The missed cuts came at The Honda Classic, Genesis Invitational, WM Phoenix Open, RSM Classic, Houston Open, Butterfield Bermuda Championship and the Sanderson Farms Championship.
His scoring average before The Players was 71.3.
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Equipment changes
Lahiri faced the media at The Players and explained how a small equipment tweak led to a major change.
He said: "It's really something that's minor. I've added maybe 3.5g of weight to all of my irons. It sounds like inconsequential, but it almost makes a 10, 12-yard difference in our line.
"These last couple of weeks especially we've been playing really tough golf courses, and you hit it four or five yards offline and you can make six instead of three. And I had a lot of that happen to me.
"So it's frustrating when you know you're not making bad swings and you're not getting the results you want, so it's equally satisfying when it comes together like this."
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The striking quote from Lahiri at The Players
Lahiri also was asked about his season so far. Which has he admits himself has been a struggle.
He said: "The beauty about what we do, is that you're one week away from being a PGA Tour winner. You're one week away from being at Augusta. You're one week away from having a two, three year exemption. You're one week away from you having a different kind of conversation with me.
"So really the road map boils down to what can I do to play better? What can I do to change the kind of scores I'm shooting. It's not like a systematic investment plan where I'm going to five points a week for the next 20 weeks. It's not like that in golf.
"So you just have to try to go back to the drawing board. You just have to try to clean up the areas that are kind of making the scorecards dirty, so to speak. And then you work your way back from there.
"I think the most important thing for me in terms of a road map is for me to build some confidence and momentum through the rest of the season. The one thing that's really important is to see myself hit more quality shots in competition.
"You have to start somewhere. I think that's more what your question is. For me, that's my starting point because once I can start building confidence and momentum through tournament golf -- and you see it on the PGA Tour, guys that miss four cuts, five cuts in a row and they'll have that big win out of nowhere.
"So the road map is really quite simple. You just have to keep working at the quality of your golf. You have to keep working to improve your confidence. To trend in the right direction and to kind of reverse the flow of things and then to let things happen.
"It's very difficult in our game to let things happen, and that's one of the things I'm guilty of because, when you're not playing well, you're trying to force a good result or trying to force a good shot. You sometimes start pushing against a wall, and you go backwards."
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