Sihkio, Nakhon Ratchasima: Thai teenager Witchayanon Chothirunrungrueng flashed a glimpse of his precocious talent, opening with a tidy two-under 70 to lie just one shot off the pace going into the penultimate round of the inaugural Mountain Creek Open by Golf Citizen on Tuesday.
Playing in his first Mena Golf Tour event, the 19-year-old amateur, known to his fellow golfers as ‘Zoom,’ raced to three-under after his first five holes and picked up another shot on the 12th, but back-to-back bogeys from the 10th prevented him from joining Spain’s Sixto Casabona-navarro at the top of the leaderboard.
Zoom finished the day tied for second in a five-man group which included his fellow Thai Changtai Sudsom, Daniel Owen and Lee Corfield, both of England, and Manish Goyal of India. The Thai prodigy, however, was a good six shots clear of India’s Rayhan in the amateur division.
Casabona-navarro mixed five birdies, including three on the front nine, to hit the front with a 69 on a sunny day when Sweden’s Kalle Nilsson produced the highlight of Round One, acing the par-3, 12th with an eight-iron from 170 yards for his first hole-in-one of his career en route to a 79.
