Crack Singapore bets lead foreign challenge in PH Amateur Open

MANILA, Philippines — A tough-as-nails  contingent from Singapore, led by defending champion Jerome Ng, sees action starting Monday in the Philippine Amateur Open golf championship presented by the MVP Sports Foundation at Wack Wack East course in Mandaluyong.

With Rupert Zaragosa failing to get a leave from school, the local challenge will be spearheaded by Jobim Carlos and reigning 13-14 Junior World champion Kristopher Arevalo as a Filipino will try to win the 72-hole event for the first time in four years.

Seeing action along with Ng in the tournament serving as part of the PLDT Group Amateur Tour and backed by Pancake House, Golf Depot and Pacsports will be the entire Singaporean national squad, as well as a good number of Korean expatriates.

Ng won this event last year despite penalizing himself two strokes for an infraction he wasn’t sure he committed. He left Zaragosa and the rest of a dumbfounded Philippine contingent that failed to tame the tree-lined East course in his wake.

Gregory Foo, a Singaporean with a Filipino mother, was the 2012 winner, while Wang Jeung-hun, a young Korean who now plays with a conditional card on the Asian Tour, was the 2011 champion at Riviera’s Langer layout.

The event also serves as the start of the National Golf Association of the Philippines’ process to determine members of the national team that will play in the World Amateurs, the Putra Cup and the Asian Games this year.

World-ranking points in events also sanctioned by the Royal & Ancient of Scotland will also help the NGAP determine the members of the PH team as several candidates are playing or living overseas.

Arevalo has been campaigning in the Open category ever since winning in San Diego last year.

Carlos, meanwhile, tries to finally win the prestigious title that has eluded him several times.

Carlos, the University of San Francisco scholar of the MVPSF, finished second to Wang and was in the top five in each of the last two years.