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The American played the wrong ball for his second shot on the 15th hole, the resulting two-stroke penalty contributing to a triple-bogey eight and an outward nine of 44 at the difficult DLF G&CC.

He dug deep to follow that with a bogey-free inward nine of 33 and though his 77 left him well off the pace in New Delhi, his spirits remained high.

“Glad I didn’t shoot 80!” the 2023 Barracuda Championship winner laughed. “Yeah, tough day – hit the wrong ball, which was very unfortunate, and just did not play good on the first nine.

“Shooting three under on my back side was great and look, this golf course is hard so if I can just try and get it back to even par, I think it’ll be a nice comeback for me. I’ll never give up and that’s kind of the goal.”