Anirban Lahiri eyes good show at RBC Heritage

The star Indian golfer Anirban Lahiri will be high on confidence when he tees off at the RBC Heritage on coming Thursday after a last week’s top-five finish at the Valero Texas Open in San Antonio recently.

The 33-year-old Bengalurean will not have to look far for motivation as one of his good friends on the PGA Tour, Hideki Matsuyama, won the historic Masters last weekend.

"Hideki is a good friend since we played on the Presidents Cup team. And we knew each other a bit from the Tour before that also. Seeing him play the highest level and win a Masters was a big boost," he said.

Soon after Matsuyama's magnificent win, Lahiri tweeted, "What a win! Hideki you did it! Time for all of us to step. So happy and proud of you my friend.

Lahiri, who is used to having his coach Vijay Divecha with him in the US for every 2-3 months, is finally re-united for three weeks with his coach Divecha, who arrived right at the start of the Masters week.

Lahiri, who had been struggling for quite some time before coming up with a solid fifth place finish at the Valero Texas Open said, “We’ll get to work on the other departments and just try and build. It will be nice to actually have him take over and have me think less and do more. It’s been tough the last three or four weeks just grinding, grinding, and grinding and working hard. So it felt nice to be rewarded by a nice week (in Texas). And now Vijay can add to that. Having him is a big change. It is a big difference.”

Talking of the week in Texas, he said, "It was really good week, a solid week. Just generally, I think my game was rock solid tee to green. When I've put in a lot of hours a lot of work.”

On the other hand, Divecha’s mantra for Lahiri is to simplify things. He said, “He (Lahiri) would not have reached where he is if he was not good, but you should not try to do too much or too many things. That’s what we are addressing. Simplifying things.”