65 teams to compete in First Gentleman’s Cup

Some 65 teams are expected to take part in the First Gentleman Cup’s, a fund-raising 18-hole tournament organized by Jose Miguel "Mike" Arroyo’s golfing buddies.

It is slated at the Wack Wack Golf and Country Club’s West course on June 27, which is also the birthday of the tournament honoree.

"With three players forming a team, we expect 195 to participate," said organizing committee overall chairman Col. Tony Cabangon Chua yesterday.

"Beneficiary of this tournament is Project OYSTER," he said. OYSTER is the acronym for Out-of-Young Serving Towards Economic Recovery.

"I readily accepted to have my name associated with the tournament when my friends told me that the goal is to raise funds for the young," Arroyo said.

Salvador Malbarosa, Wack Wack general manager and the tournament’s secretariat chairman, said yesterday that there would be two kinds of entry fees.

"Entry fee for a complete team of three players is P100,000 while entry fee for an individual player is P50,000," he said. "We will then look for two others to form their team."

"This early, in behalf of the organizing committee, I would like to express our gratitude to our sponsors as well as fellow golfers who would take part," Cabangon Chua said.

Also working side by side with Cabangon Chua in the organizing committee are ways and means committee chairman Jack KC Ng and co-chairmen Jimmy Tang and Alfonso Siy.

Way Way board member Pablo Soon is the tournament chairman while Wack Wack golf director Bones Floro is the tournament director.

Project OYSTER is an emergency employment program led by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in coordination with the Philippine National Police.

The country’s police districts are carrying out the project in cooperation with national government agencies, local government units, business and economic associations, youth-oriented organizations and civic groups.

The project had is beginning last Jan. 21 at barangay Commonwealth, Quezon City in the course of the President’s consultation meetings with depressed communities.

In that meeting, Kriston Hari parish priest Fr. James Gaa pleaded with her to act on the growing number of out-of-school youth in the area and their rising involvement in criminality.

The President immediately directed Chief Superintendent Rodolfo Tor to formulate a police-oriented program that would curb juvenile criminality and at the same time extend emergency economic assistance for the community’s out-of-school youth.

Tor, a director of the PNP’s Central Police District that covers barangay Commonwealth, formulated the Project OYSTER.