Anirban Lahiri will seek to fast-track his progress on the PGA Tour when he tees up at the high-profile World Golf Championships (WGC), starting Thursday.
This week the field will be the strongest this season so far. And leading them off will be last weekend's Honda Classic winner Adam Scott.
It will also be the first event of the season to feature Jason Day, Jordan Spieth and Rory McIlroy all in the same field. Defending champion Dustin Johnson, Bubba Watson, Louis Oosthuizen will also tee up in the starry field.
The USD 9.5 million WGC-Cadillac is the first of the four WGC events and Lahiri, who played each of the four WGC events in 2015, will be hoping to better his showing in this global showpiece. Lahiri's best at a WGC event last year was T-40 at the WGC-HSBC and at Cadillac Championships, he was way down in T-71st.
Lahiri has been paired with former Masters winner, Charl Schwartzel of South Africa and Justin Thomas for the first two rounds. The trio will tee off from the 10th.
So far, Lahiri has made five cuts in seven starts in the wrap-around 2015-16 season. Five of those starts have been in the calendar year 2016 and he has made the cut in three with T-28 at Career Builder Challenge as his best. He was T-33 at Waste Managements Phoenix Open and T-39 at Northern Trust Open.
Lahiri's problems have been around the greens as he gets adjusted to the grass but his hitting has been good at most times. A good steady week will help stabilize his progress and set him on road to a good finish in the season, where he is also confirmed for three of the four Majors and is still ranked No. 50 in the world.
Also in the field is Thailand's Kiradech Aphibarnrat who is confident he can put up a strong challenge. Kiradech, the 2013 Asian Tour Order of Merit champion, will make his second appearance at the Trump National Doral course after finishing in 67th place in 2014.
Other Asian Tour stalwarts in the field will include K.T. Kim of Korea and Australians Scott Hend, Nathan Holman and Marcus Fraser, winner of the Maybank Championship Malaysia a fortnight ago.
Kiradech will tee off alongside Charley Hoffman and Emiliano Grillo in the first two days of the WGC Cadillac Championship.
