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THROUGH
the years, many car companies provide cars for many golf
tournaments almost all year round. Mitsubishi, Honda,
Nissan, Benz, BMW, Ford, Isuzu, Hyundai, Jaguar, Subaru,
Volvo and
Toyota—name
it—it’s there.
They do
it not only in
Manila
but also in the Visayas and Mindanao as well.
Why they
do it isn’t actually a puzzle.
They do
it mainly because they see golfers as necessary allies
in their business.
Not only
in the
Philippines
do we regularly see the robust support of car companies
in golf events. They are all over the world.
Nissan
and Honda have yearly big tournaments for pros in the
US. BMW has its own version in the European Golf Tour.
Volvo has two big ones in Asia alone—one in China and
another in Bangkok.
Toyota used to have the Toyota World Match Play in
Wentworth, England.
Car
companies are in golf tournaments all over the
archipelago for the simple reason that, aside from the
institutional side of it, practically all golfers own at
least one car each. As the joke goes, you don’t have a
car, you can’t be a golfer. Or, you don’t deserve to be
called a golfer if you don’t own a car.
Have you
seen a golfer carrying his golf bag loaded with golf
clubs hailing a jeep or a bus?
There’d
be times, I’m sure, when we see someone, who is
obviously a golfer flagging down a cab.
But when
did we last see someone lugging a golf bag, wearing
spiked shoes and a golf cap, stopping a passenger
jeepney or a passenger bus?
That
someone must be nuts. And if he or she is your
friend—or you consider yourself to be his/her friend—you
are duty-bound to summon him/her and tell him/her he/she
ought to stop doing that.
Counsel
him/her to first buy a car before proceeding to take the
game of golf seriously.
You’d be
doing him/her a favor, saving him/her from eternal
embarrassment.
If you
hear him/her say, “But I don’t have the money yet to buy
a car?” wake him/her up by snapping back, “Then save
money to buy your own car, or hitch a ride with a friend
when you go play golf. Otherwise, put on hold your
addiction to the game.”
It might
be hard doing that, but if you are a true friend, you
must do it.
Now, to
be brutally frank about it, “How can you play golf when
you don’t have a car to load in your own golf set? And
how about your carry-all bag—and the golf shoes?”
Elementary, my friend, elementary.
Car and
golf—it’s like the horse-and-carriage thing: One is
inutile without the other. Always, like man and woman,
one can’t live without the other.
Thus,
car companies need golfers as golfers need cars, too.
It’s almost a symbiotic relationship. You divorce them
and, more often than not, disaster sets in.
Usually,
the sponsorship package of a car company in golf
tournaments comes in the form of providing a vehicle as
a hole-in-one prize.
In this
country, cars as hole-in-one prizes have become
fixtures.
The
annual Philippine Open, the Corral Tee of Cebu, the
Sugar Tee of Bacolod, the Durian Tee of Davao, the
Golden Tee at Manila Golf Club, the Mango Tee at Alabang
and the Member-Guest Invitational at The Riviera are
among the country’s more famous tournaments that have
cars as hole-in-one prizes.
In the
ongoing Konica Minolta National Pro-Am alone at The
Riviera in Silang, Cavite, two Toyota cars are at stake
as hole-in-one prizes.
Nobody
won the 10th-generation Corolla Altis on March 4 during
the Celebrity Konica Minolta Pro-Am, a tournament
attended by a slew of top Toyota Motor Philippines
executives, led by TMP first vice president Danny “Sir
John” Isla (the others were Sherwin Chua-Lim, Rene So of
Toyota-Dagupan City and president Dexter Pasion of
Toyota Financial Services).
Set to
end tomorrow, Saturday (March 8), the four-day Konica
Minolta Pro-Am is staking the best-selling Vios as a
hole-in-one prize (nobody has won it as we went to
press).
In the
Celebrity Pro-Am on Tuesday that President Ramos has
never missed attending since 2001, it was the prayer of
everybody that, in the near future, the Toyota car be
raffled off to the participants if nobody wins it in the
hole-in-one contest.
“Why
not?” said lawyer Edilberto B. Bravo, the top gun of the
sponsoring U-Bix Corp. “Surely, that’ll make our event
the talk of the town.”
If it
relents to that next year,
Toyota
will deliver a coup de grâce.
Pee stop.
Jun Magturo, visting from Los Angeles, California, and
who now drives a GPS-powered Camry, is all praise for
Commonwealth
Avenue, QC. “Because it’s become superwide, traffic has
been eased off considerably. I wish they’d do the same
on Edsa.” |
