Shubhankar Sharma is set to become the fifth, and youngest-ever, Indian golfer to win the Asian Tour Order of Merit, and will claim the top prize after the season-ending Indonesian Masters on December 16.
He joins Jyoti Randhawa, Arjun Atwal, Jeev Milkha Singh and Anirban Lahiri as Indians to have won the Order of Merit as the top-earning pros on the Asian Tour, with Jeev the only Indian to have done so twice, in 2006 and 2008. At 22, he will comfortably be the youngest Indian to have done so with the next closest, Lahiri, being 28 when he won the Order of Merit in 2015.
With a total prize money of $755,994 on the Asian Tour for 2018, Sharma's Order of Merit win was confirmed on Friday, after both Justin Harding of South Africa and Scott Vincent of Zimbabwe failed to make the cut at the South African Open in Johannesburg, leaving both adrift by nearly $300,000 on the Asian Tour.
The Indonesian Masters will have a total prize money of $ 750,000, effectively meaning even a top finish will only fetch the winner only a fraction of the earnings, as the sum is distributed among all players who make the cut, with the share of the money proportional to the rank achieved.
This puts Sharma ahead of second-placed Park Sang Hyun of South Korea ($ 561,898), Harding ($ 479,816), India's Gaganjeet Bhullar ($ 422,935) and Vincent ($420,886).
This achievement caps off a consistent 12 months for Sharma, who won his first big title almost exactly a year ago at the Joburg Open, co-sanctioned by the European Tour and the Asian Tour. He would also pick top spot in the Maybank Championship in Malaysia in February, besides reaching a career-high ranking of 64 during the first of two other top-10 finishes on the Asian Tour this year at the Indian Open in March.
