Manotoc to start 'em young for AG, SEAG

MANILA, Philippines - Inspired by the silver medal finish of junior golfer Miguel Tabuena in individual golf in the Asian Games, the National Golf Association of the Philippines may soon shift its attention to teenage golfers who will be trained for the Southeast Asian Games and the Asiad.

“Mr. Peping Cojuangco (POC president and former golf president) has already told me to go ahead with this project,” said national men’s coach Tommy Manotoc, also the head of NGAP’s junior golf development program.

“In fact we already have a budget to train young golfers from two to three years for the Asian Games and Southeast Asian Games,” said Manotoc.

Golf officials who watched the Asian Games golf competitions, saw the growing trend of tapping teenage golfers for the Asian and Southeast Asian Games.

The new individual and team champions from South Korea which swept all the four gold medals at stake in the Asian Games are all under 20. They are men’s individual champion Kim Meen Whee (18 years old), women’s individual champion Lee Kyoung Hoon 19, Kim Hyun Soo 18, Park Hwhan 18, Lee Joo Wyeok 16, Jaichalad Attachai of Thailand 18, as well as Filipino golfers Marcel Puyat 17, Chihiro Ikeda 19, and Dottie Ardina 17.

Ikeda, Ardina and Mia Piccio formed the RP team that won the individual and team gold medals in last year’s Laos Southeast Asian Games.

Manotoc himself admitted that with the short period of time they had to prepare the boys and girls for Guangzhou, he did not expect any one of them to win a medal.

“The team we sent to the World Championships was not the same as the one we have here in Guangzhou, that’s why we did not expect much from them. In fact, I expected the ladies to win, not the boys,” he said.

“It’s a pleasant surprise,” he said.

The big surprise is the golf course itself, which he said does not really conform to international rules of golf.

It must have an equal distribution of holes according to their degree of difficulty – easy, medium and major.

“There was not a single easy hole on that course,” he said.

The course is naturally beautiful, which gives a view of the misty mountains above and the crystal-clear lake on the other side, with the natural valleys transformed into fairways going up and down the front nine, while old liche trees retained their grandeur by the fairway near a lake so clear one could drink its water.