With two gold medals, golf was the biggest source of pride for the Philippines in the Asian Games last year when the Filipinos managed four victories in Indonesia.
But it has become a big puzzle why the popularity and prominence of Tiger Woods’ sport continued to suffer locally as shown again by the scant coverage and play up in the media of the recent Philippine Open at the windswept The Country Club course in Santa Rosa, Laguna.
The Open week used to provide the sports pages with banner stories and features of possible contenders from the usual multination field starting with the pro-am up to the final round. A Filipino victory also was front-page material.
When Clyde Mondilla became the winner on the event’s 101st edition as Asia’s oldest national golf championship last Saturday, the story hardly made the upper fold of the sports pages. Two of the biggest national dailies carried only a one-column picture of the third Mindanao native to win the Open after the celebrated Celestino Tugot and Frankie Miñoza.
Notwithstanding the publicity snub, unheard of when the sports section of some major dailies still had golf-playing editors, Mondilla provided the Open with one of its most unlikely winners.
The youngest national amateur winner at 16 and the Philippine Golf Tour Order of Merit champion in 2017 with four titles, the parbuster from Manolo Fortich, Bukidnon, was in the midst of a long slump from injuries and personal woes going into the Open, where he placed 56th last year.
After missing the halfway cut in the PH Open warmup at the ICTSI Riviera Classic with rounds of 75-80 a week earlier, Mondilla finally got going at the TCC course with a 71 then swept into a four-shot lead with a 69 in a big comeback from a second-round 75. He went on to finish with two hard pars for another 75 and a two-shot win at 290 over American Nicolas Paez, his lone final-day pursuer, who finished with a 70.
Two days after Mondilla’s breakthrough win, Yuka Saso, who delivered the two Asian Games golds last year, was again in the limelight by placing third in the inaugural Augusta National women’s amateur at Augusta, National in Georgia.
There’s just no ignoring golf after all.