Top Asian pros in Aboitiz golf

The country’s top golfing stars will duke it out with the top players in the Asian Development Tour as they clash in the Aboitiz Invitational slated Aug. 31 to Sept. 3 at the Cebu Country Club in Banilad.

The $65,000-tournament is making its debut on the ADT this year as the seventh leg of its 2011 schedule. The event was launched yesterday with a tournament involving local and national scribes. Afterwards, a press conference was held at the Narra Room which was graced by officials of the Pilipinas Golf Tour, Aboitiz Equity Ventures, the ADT and the CCC. Several pros were also at the event led by Artemio Murakami and Carl Santos-Ocampo and Brunei’s Faiz Damit.

As the Aboitiz Invitational will be one of the final tournaments of the season on the ADT, it will play an important role in determining the top three players on the Order of Merit. The leading three money-earners will gain an automatic card to the elite Asian Tour for the 2012 season.

“We’re proud to be associated with the ADT. We want to help put Cebu on the golfing map, not just on the national level but also the Asian regional level,” said Sebastian Lacson, Aboitiz’s Chief Reputation Officer.

Chinese Taipei’s Chiang Cheh-chih, winner of the Transcend Championship in Taipei, is currently leading the Merit list with $22,750 followed by American Jonathan Moore, who topped the PGM Impian Classic in Kuala Lumpur with $15,916.

Murakami is running third with earnings of $14,517 followed by another Chinese Taipei player Chang Tse-peng and Malaysia’s S. Siva Chandhran, who was the inaugural ADT Order of Merit champion and the only player with multiple wins on the ADT so far.

Juvic Pagunsan, the current leader of the PGT Order of Merit and a winner in the Asian Tour, is also expected to challenge for honors in the Aboitiz Invitational along with the country’s other leading players such as Antonio Lascuna, who finished joint third at the Asian Tour’s Worldwide Holdings Selangor Masters last week, Angelo Que and teenage sensation Miguel Tabuena.

126 PROS COMPETING

According to Htwe Hla Han, a total of 126 pros are expected to converge at the CCC to compete for the $11,000 first prize. Colo Ventosa, the general manager of the PGT, said  the players enjoyed the tournament last year, so much so that they had to bring them back for a bigger tournament with bigger prizes. “We’re hoping that a Filipino will come away with the title though,” she said.

Murakami, who has won on the Asian Tour previously, said the upgrading of the Aboitiz Invitational into an ADT event will present a wonderful opportunity for budding Filipino golfers to compete on the international stage.

“I am very much looking forward to the Aboitiz Invitational as it will allow the local stars to compete against many of the leading players from the ADT. While the ADT is the development circuit for the Asian Tour, competition is still very demanding as the winning scores are often very low. We will need to consistently shoot low scores to compete on the ADT,” said Murakami.

This year, The ADT has already traveled to Malaysia, Chinese Taipei and Bangladesh.

In the inaugural year in 2010, five events were staged in the ADT.