Pinoy golfers beat Korean rivals
CANLUBANG – Ira Alido and Harmie Constantino outdueled their Korean rivals in gut wrenching final round duels to rule their respective divisions in the W Express RVF Cup Amateur Golf Championship at the Canlubang Golf and Country Club’s North course here yesterday.
Alido squandered a four-stroke lead but battled back from one down with three holes left to foil Kim Joo Hyung with a 72 and complete a wire-to-wire triumph in the men’s side while Harmie Constantino rallied from four strokes behind to snare the women’s crown from Hwang Min-jeong with a 69.
It was a pair of stirring triumphs capping the four-day championship held as part of the PLDT Group National Amateur Golf Tour and backed by the MVP Sports Foundation, Cignal and Metro Pacific Investments with Alido pouncing on Kim’s late-hole meltdown and Constantino cashing in on Hwang’s early foldup to clinch the two-stroke victories at 282 and 289, respectively.
The 16-year-old Alido had a doublebogey start, enabling Kim, winner of last year’s Philippine Junior stroke play crown, to inch closer from four down to within one with a 33 at the front. The Manila Southwoods bet went 2-up again with a birdie on No. 12 but bogeyed the next and Kim, who birdied No. 13, drew level at seven-under overall then grabbed the lead as Alido bogeyed the 15th.
Cebu’s Weiwei Gao rallied with a 69 to snatch third place at 285 while Japanese Yuto Katsuragawa also fired a 69 for joint fourth with a faltering Rupert Zaragosa at 286.
Constantino, who led halfway through the event organized and conducted by the National Golf Association of the Philippines and held in honor of the late golf patron and former NGAP president Rod Feliciano but fell by four with a 76 Thursday, struck back with a 35 start then watched Hwang slip with bogey and a double-bogey in a birdieless 39 to even things up.
The Filipina ace, a former national champion and member of the team that won the World Girls’ Junior team crown in Canada last year, then closed out with a solid two-under 34 with birdies on Nos. 11 and 15, both par-3s, while Hwang settled for a 36 and a 75 for a 291.