La Salle leads by 41 in interschool jungolf

MANILA, Philippines - La Salle-Taft turned an erstwhile close fight with Ateneo into a decisive breakaway, taking a commanding 41-point lead after 54 holes in the seniors division of the ICTSI-JGFP Interschools golf tournament at the hazard-laden Aguinaldo layout recently.

Marvin Mendoza picked up where Nico Monsalve left off by topscoring with 52 points as La Salle-Taft pounced on Ateneo’s lethargic scoring to finally pull away after the Ateneans managed to keep it close in the first two rounds.

The score now stands at 434 for La Salle and 393 for Ateneo with the La Sallians posting a 147 counting the 48 of Allan Bumagat and 47 of Eric Gallardo. Ateneo was simply outscored with the trio of Raffy Tolentino (41), Rocco Sumabat (40) and Moshe Baldo (37) all struggling at the military course.

Over at Valley, Ateneo encountered its biggest challenge yet from Xavier but remained 34 points ahead after three rounds of the tourney featuring 250 junior players with the major backing of the International Container Terminal Services, Inc.

Meanwhile, the Interschool series also supported by Philippine Airlines, Pancake House Group, Sizzlin Pepper, Pancake House and Golf Depot became even bigger with the organizing Junior Golf Foundation of the Philippines adding a Mindanao leg on Nov. 24-25 at Del Monte.

JGFP president Luigi Tabuena said that the new leg is in response to a clamor by schools in the south for a similar exposure.

Aidric Chan submitted his best score of 54 but still needed the support of Ateneo teammates Carl Jano Corpus (47) and Marc Corrales (46) to match the 147 thrown at them by the Xavier boys.

There’s a lot of catching up to do for Xavier (400) as it remained far behind Ateneo’s 434 total. Nathan Kapweng led the Xavier assault with a 51 while Kendrick and Enrique Diaz made 49 and 47, respectively.

La Salle Greenhills was at 340, Learning Links Academy 313, Xavier 310, Ateneo 2 at 288 and La Salle Zobel at 260.

Chan also seized a nine-shot lead over Ira Alido of Elizabeth Seton in the individual race while Mendoza stayed eight clear of College of St. Benilde bet Joseph Uy in the seniors category.