Miguel Tabuena will have to wait until next year to defend his Philippine Open title.
Asia’s oldest national golf championship was officially scratched this year and instead will come back with a bang in March as Solaire stepped up to be the title sponsor of the 99th edition to be held at the “new” The Country Club layout in Laguna.
Though the Open will not be included in the Asian Tour calendar, golf patron Ricky Razon has dangled a $350,000 kitty, which would hopefully be enough to lure the region’s best international players over.
The 72-hole championship will have Solaire as the principal sponsor until it plays its centennial edition in 2018 and TCC, which underwent a massive facelift the last two years to make it fit for tough international tournaments, will host its first pro event since reopening about two months ago.
Every inch of its new length of 7,760 yards will be utilized, and, for the first time, the “Tiger tees,” a distance Razon himself made sure would be included in the design, will be used.
“It’s become tougher, almost unbelievably hard,” two-time Open champion Frankie Miñoza, still the most revered name among pros in the land, told the Inquirer during lunch after the official launch of the event yesterday at Solaire’s Eclipse lounge.
“Not only was it (TCC) lengthened, it was also reshaped to make sure that the best players are tested,” added Miñoza.
Tabuena won the rain-shorted Open last year at Luisita and is actually raring to defend his first Asian Tour title this year, but the National Golf Association of the Philippines, the country’s governing body which owns the rights to the event, failed to find a sponsor until the last minute.
“I can’t wait,” said Tabuena, who played in the Rio Olympics, also during the launch where he and Miñoza shared the presidential table with the Philippine Golf Tour’s Colo Ventoza, NGAP chair Gigi Montinola and Solaire CEO Thomas Arasi.
“We are sure that the quality of the international field will be topnotch since our event will not coincide with any Asian Tour event,” Ventosa said.
Ventosa also said that they exhausted all means to have the event included in the Asian Tour schedule, “but we just couldn’t agree to some of their terms.”