WEIWEI KEEPS HEAD ABOVE WATER
Weiwei Gao drops to fifth place, looks to hit more greens in the next round to keep title hopes alive Harmie Constantino leaned on late birdies to surge past Day 1 leaders and wrest control of the women’s play Cebu’s golfer Weiwei Gao fired a 74 in the second round and dropped to fifth place in the W Express RVF Cup Amateur Golf Championship at the Cangolf’s North course in Canlubang, Laguna yesterday.
Gao, the ace junior golfer of Alta Vista Golf and Country Club, put up 74 in the second round after scoring 71 in the opening round. Gao dropped to joint fifth place with 145, four strokes behind leader Ira Christian Alido, who shot 71 in the second round to follow up his 70 on the first round.
Alido was three strokes ahead of closest foes Jolo Magcalayo and Rupert Zaragosa, who had identical 144 after 36 holes.
Carl Corpus and Gao were tied with 145 and are still in conten- tion heading to the penultimate round of the 72-hole championships organized by National Golf Association of the Philippines.
Gao, who’s bound for the University of Virginia, was in joint second place with Magcalayo, Zaragosa and Paolo Wong after the first round last Tuesday.
“(My score) was not good in the second round. I wasn’t hitting a lot of greens. My goal is to hit more greens for the next round,” Gao, 16, told SunStar Cebu yesterday.
Meanwhile, Harmie Constantino wrested control in women’s play with a 69 halfway through the tournament.
She leaned on late birdies to surge past erstwhile joint leaders Mikha Fortuna and Bernice Oliva- rez-Ilas and grabbed a one-stroke lead of the 72-hole championship 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.
The former national champion actually sizzled early and shot a 33 at the front, spiked by birdies on Nos. 4, 5 and 7. But she opened the backside with backto-back bogeys and needed to birdie No. 14 and 16 to complete a 69 and storm ahead at 144.
Fortuna threatened to pull away with three straight birdies from No. 2 but the top The Country Club mainstay wavered with back-to-back bogeys from No. 16, enabling Constantino to move ahead.