PAL Interclub @70: Recalling its lore and lure

MANILA, Philippines - Toward noon the mists had dried up on the pine needles that blanketed the old Camp John Hay course in Baguio.

One remembers Ed Unson, a  huge power hitter of a national player, walking into the press room with a reed-thin 15-year-old guy from the South who had just fired the best round that day in the 1975 PAL Interclub.

“Watch out for this boy, he will be a great champ someday,” said Unson who has since passed on.

The boy turned out to be Frankie Miñoza.

Through the years there would be a lot of amateurs in Miñoza’s mold, going through the cauldron of the PAL Interclub, soaking in the experience, stewing in its pressure and gaining the wisdom they would need later in their careers.

As the event unwraps its 70th edition with the Seniors tourney on-going at Apo and Rancho Palos Verdes layouts in Davao, it has long been ceded that the Interclub is the breeding and testing grounds of the best in Philippine golf.

“It’s a must tournament for promising amateurs. It motivates young golfers to work hard on their game,” said Canlubang skipper Luigi Yulo, architect of the Sugar Barons 17 men’s regular titles and nine Senior plums and best remembered for steering the team to a historic win in 1977  in its rookie year.

The late Luis Golem Silverio would fire up Negros and Wack Wack squads for decades beginning in the 50s. There would be others. Juvic Pagunsan, Mars Pucay, Antonio Lascuña, Rodrigo Cuello, Angelo Que, Ramon Brobio, and the latest heartthrob Miguel Tabuena have tabbed their tickets and gone through baptism of fire in the Interclub.

Seventy years. It has gone a long way from its humble beginning as a six-team event with 120 players in the fold in 1948 to foster camaraderie and fellowship among golfers and PAL friends in a 36-hole affair in Wack Wack. Today it has 90 teams seeing action, 51 from overseas made up of foreign players, Fil-Ams, expats and OCWs who would fly over to see action and enjoy holidays on the side.

It has been long regarded as the unofficial national team championship, the longest running amateur championship and the second oldest event after the Philippine Open.

For a shortage of sustained amateur outings in the past, the Interclub became the No. 1 amateur event, forcing organizers to hold two courses to accommodate the ever burgeoning cast of players  when it was held in Bacolod in 1957.

The Interclub is the event highly anticipated in the amateur circle for it deals not only with the talent and skills of the players   but also on the game plans and gambits off the fairways, on how to exact the best from the team, field guys who would deliver or counter the charge of their rivals’ top guns.

And on the last day, they would assemble the finest unit for the final clash, watch as the drama builds up to  a virtual gunfight at high noon.

By dusk a champion shall have been enshrined and honored, with the heroics of  its men further enriching the lore of the PAL Interclub.