By Kent Gray
Arjun Gupta has probably been the least flamboyant of the MENA Tour’s “Three Musketeers”, the teen triumvirate including fellow 14-year-old phenoms Josh Hill and Toby Bishop, until now.

That’s no slight, especially not given the way Hill has become a serial winner in the past 18 months, most recently winning The Els Club Open – the Emirates Golf Federation’s penultimate order of merit event of the season – at the weekend.

But don’t be fooled. Plus-five handicapper Gupta is no supporting act in this threesome taking Middle East amateur golf by storm and proved it by clinching the 2019 Faldo Series Middle East Championship at Al Ain Equestrian, Shooting and Golf Club late last week  – and in some style too.

Gupta compiled rounds of 73-67-67 for a three-under-par, 207 aggregate which was impressive given the gusty conditions on the first two days which made greens running at 11 on the stimp metre especially tricky to negotiate.

Gupta is flanked by Matthew Faldo and AESGC club captain Anton Van Schalkwyk.

It was good enough to see the Dubai-based Indian edge Welshman Bishop by nine shots in the under-16 division and win the overall title by two shots from Ziang Xu, the under-18 division champion.

Hill wasn’t playing at Al Ain but like the fabled fictional characters, Dubai’s Three Musketeers also play by the “All for one, one for all” motto. You can be sure Hill was right behind Bishop in offering his congratulations to his Claude Harmon 3 Performance Golf Academy pal Gupta.

For the record, Hill won the 54-hole Faldo Middle East title last year by six shots from Gupta and Bishop. Stepping up to the MENA Tour has clearly helped at age–group level too; Gupta is sixth in the regional Pro-Am circuit’s amateur OOM (Hill is second) after making the cut in each of the first five events of the season, including a best finish of 40th at the season-opening Journey to Jordan-1 event.

Gupta’s sister Natalli, meanwhile, finished runner-up in the U-16 girls’ championship at AESGC, six shots adrift of Sakura Kawakami who finished +13. Lisa Marie Schumacher won the under-21 women’s title with a +13 total, a closing 67 giving her the title over Hyeonji Kang. Schumacher and Kawakami finished sixth and seventh respectively on the combined girls and boys leaderboard.

Yaseen Le Falher won the under-21 men’s title with a +6 total. 

The winners will get to meet Sir Nick Faldo when AESGC hosts the Faldo Series Europe Grand Final in November, the first of a three-year contract extension to host the finale.

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