P. Verdes paces Sta. Lucia tour

DAVAO — The buildup paid off for an undersized Rancho Palos Verdes as the host club scored a breakthrough victory right in the opening leg of the Sta. Lucia Golf Tour 2002 here.

All three frontliners of the Palos Verdes — Willy de Leon (53), Marcelo Tibor (52) and Paul Larrabaster (51) — scored in the 50s and carried teammate Anton Ferrazzini to a seven-point win over the star-studded Alta Vista squad in Group I.

Rancho finished with 156 points in the second round for a two-day total of 302. Alta Vista, led by Montito Garcia’s tournament best 54 point on the second day and Carl Almario, wound up at 295.

Alta Vista 6 took Group II and Eagle Ridge 5 clinched Group III of the tourney which has Taylor Made, Readycon and Unirock as major backers and Gainers Marketing, Omega, Philippine Airlines, Kubota, Cebu Pacific and Kodak as minor sponsors. Jieda Motors and Yamaha are hole-in-one sponsors. Marco Polo served as the official hotel.

The Alta Vista 6 quartet of Felix Villanueva, Danny Ledesma, Ed Manzano and Jufil Sato aggregated 244 to foil the strong charge of Palos Verdes 3 which scored 238.

With its bid for an overall three-peat in trouble, Eagle Ridge’s fifth team of Jose Bustos Nepomuceno, Joel Agbanlog, Benito Oblena and Min Kyung Hun took charge. They totalled 229 to easily beat Alta Vista 10 by 15 points.

Individual winners were Tibor in Class A, Shinichi Ogihara of Eagle Ridge (Class B), Sato (Class C) and Flory Pareja of Palos Verdes (Class D).

The other two clubs seeing action in the series -- Orchard and Royale Tagaytay -- went home empty handed.

"After two years of trying we finally got one. This is, hopefully, a good sign for Palos Verdes and we will try to do better in the next leg," said Joe Marfori, general manager of the host club.

The next leg will be played at the Alta Vista Golf and Country Club in Cebu next month with the final leg to be co-hosted by Eagle Ridge and Orchard in December. Royale Tagaytay will stage the Taylor Made shootout as a side-event to the concluding leg.