WITH a fourth Order of Merit in the bag for Antonio Lascuña, the attention will be on who gets to close out the 2016 Philippine Golf Tour season with a bang when the ICTSI Tournament Players Championship tees off this Wednesday at Wack Wack’s East course in Mandaluyong.
Lascuña will go into the P3.5-million event holding an edge of close to P500,000 in prize money on Clyde Mondilla and would only be denied of his first OOM in two years if he finishes out of the Top 15 and Mondilla or Jay Bayron wins. The TPC champion goes home with P650,000.
Apart from Lascuña, Mondilla and Bayron, also looming as one of the players to watch is the 19-year-old Micah Shin, who broke through as a pro by ruling the Central Azucarera de Tarlac Open on Saturday.
Bayron, though, is expected to command more attention at Wack Wack. He won the Aboitiz Invitational over the old course a couple of months back—one of two tournaments he dominated this season.
But it will be Shin who will have the momentum as he shoots for a result only the elite players have done on the local tour.
“It took me three years to win and I hope I can do it again,” said Shin, an American-Korean who polished his game as a boy in Davao’s demanding Apo Golf layout.
Shin pounded the well-manicured Luisita layout with a seven-under-par 65 on Friday and used a four-shot lead to cushion Lascuña’s final-day rally.