Southwoods pad lead after two rounds
MANILA Southwoods stayed on course for another shot at the premiere crown of the 69th Fil-Am Invitational golf tournament despite simmering down with 128 points at the Baguio Country Club for a two day aggregate of 266 and a 31 point lead in the Fil Championship.
Again, the young guns did the heavy lifting with Yuto Katsuragawa making 34 points to pace the team, even as Aidric Chan came in with 33, Carl Corpus had 32 and Aguri Iwasaki chipped in 29 to count for the team. This as “senior” Junjun Plana did not count anew with his 28.
Royal Northwoods had 30 points from Luigi Paolo Wong, Carlo Villaroman and Raymund Sangil,
while Richard Joson added 29 as the team improved to 119 and 235 points.
Forest Hills – Puma, meanwhile, had 33 from Inigo Raymundo and Jude Eustaquio added a 32 for the team’s 124 to cut Northwoods lead on them by five. The team has 231 points, just four off Northwoods, with Rocky Co and former national amateur champion Rupert Zaragosa adding 30 and 29, respectively.
Mizuno – X-1R may have improved on the second day shooting 108 points to amass 207 for fourth spot.
The teams will take a day break before going to the longer Camp John Hay course on Friday.
“That’s a big lead, it’s not that we are giving up but with the caliber of players Southwoods have, we just hope to finish with a respectable score,” said Eustaquio Forest Hills captain.
“It will be fun and we know that Dodong (Zaragosa) will have some firepower there,” he added.
Eustaquio hopes that their play will get a little better everyday as they also narrowed the gap with Northwoods from nine to four.
“And Northwoods is really pretty good team with a deep line up, so we just hope to improve our play and not think about it,” he added.
Despite not playing at their level best, Southwoods improved its lead by another six points after making 130 for 277. Southwoods lead is now 36 points on track of duplicating the whopping 50 point victory last year.
Lanz Uy, Josh Jorge and 14 year old Masaichi Otake made 34 points, while 13-year old Jeff Jung added 29 to count for the team which hopes to repeat in the Am Championship.
Uy on Tuesday fired the tournament best of two under 67 for 38, while Jung and Jorge had an even par but simply could not weave his first round magic when he shot three birdies but was hobbled with five bogeys on holes, 3, 4, 5, 7 and 12.
Liam Cully had an even worse round of 27 from a one under for 37 on day one and did not count.
“This is a pretty young team with a 13 year old and two 14year old, because we want to train new ones. With Aidric and Carl leaving for the United States next year, we want to have somebody to replace them and any of the young guys will be the replacement next year,” said Southwoods captain Thirdy Escano.
Ricky delos Santos had the best round of one over 70 for 35 points to lead Batangas Barakos to 124 and 241 to overtake first round second placer Philippine Navy which shot 111 and 231.
Michael Mendoza made 33, Gary Sales equaled his first round 30 and Takuya Kawamura chipped in 26 to count for the Barakos.
Demitrio Sanchez paced the Navy with 32 for 111 points which is just three off on Forest Hills Nicklaus which made 116 on Rodel Mangalubnan’s 33 for 228 points.
Razons of Guagua matched its first day total of 109 for 218 points and fifth spot.