Diksha Dagar claims gold medal at Deaflympics

By PTI

CAXIAS: Indian golfer Diksha Dagar outplayed American Ashlyn Grace in the final to bag gold medal at the Deaflympics, fulfilling her promise of improving upon the silver-winning performance at the 2017 edition.

Diksha is now the only golfer with two Deaflympics medals, a silver in Samsun, Turkey in 2017 and gold in 2022, which is actually the 2021 edition of Deaflympics.

The 21-year-old left-hander, who is a professional with victories on the Ladies European Tour, completed a dominant performance with a 5 and 4 win in the final of the match play section of the ladies golf competition.

She beat Grace Johnson with four holes to spare In 2017, when golf was first introduced at the Deaflympics, Diksha, then still an amateur and still short of her 17th birthday, reached the final comfortably.

There she lost in a play-off to American Yost Kaylin, who at that time was also playing in the Symetra Tour and some events on the LPGA Tour.

In 2021, Diksha also qualified at the last moment for the Tokyo Olympics and became the first golf player to have ever played at both Deaflympics and the Olympic Games.

Turning pro in early 2019, Diksha won the Investec South Africa Women’s Open that year itself.

In 2021, she was part of the winning team at the Aramco Team Series London.

Both events are part of the Ladies European Tour.

While still being an amateur she also won multiple times on the Hero Women’s Pro Circuit in India.

Diksha has a hearing impairment and started wearing hearing aids from the age of six.

The battle for the bronze medal was hard-fought as Frenchwoman Margaux ended Norwegian Andrea Hovtsein’s attempt for a second medal on the third play-off hole, that is the 21st hole.

Andrea was the bronze medallist in 2017.