SO young, so mature.
That’s Yuka Saso, the latest golf sensation from the Philippines.
So young, so rich.
Yuka, not yet 20, has won again, pocketing her second straight victory on Sunday in the tough Japan Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA). She stashed away P16.5 million and, adding her P6.5-million winnings just two weeks ago, she has fattened her bank account to P23 million in just less than a month.
She showed guts to achieve both.
She showed nerves of steel in vanquishing her rivals.
She showed poise when under pressure.
And yet, Yuka is only 19, a virtual kid in a shark-infested pool where, in a battleground like Japan, only the scarred and grizzled survive.
“I looked at the leaderboard several times, yes,” Yuka told the Inquirer’s Francis TJ Ochoa. “But to be honest, I was just minding my own game.”
Words from a rookie, which she is, that could only be spoken by a veteran. Gutsy.
To win anew after scoring a brilliant breakthrough victory by four impressive strokes only two weeks ago, Yuka had to claw back from the pit. Nervy.
Her toughest foe “was very good, but I really did not watch how she was playing.”
If that wasn’t poise under pressure, what is? Valorous.
Saso didn’t crack when Sakura Koiwai grabbed the lead after Yuka got wet on her approach in the 355-yard second hole. One slip would cost not a war.
After four holes, Yuka retook the lead with an eight-foot birdie on the sixth.
And, after going 2-up over Koiwai with a chip-in birdie in the par-3 12th, increasing it to three when Koiwai bogeyed 16, Yuka was on her way to a second straight podium finish.
Surely, it was a victory made more significant by the fact that a Filipina teenager that is half-Japanese has started cementing her niche in Asian professional golf this early.
Embellishing Yuka’s suddenly blossoming stature of stardom is her hidden humility.
“I think I just got the breaks,” said Yuka, who averaged 29 putts per round, closing out with a one-under-par 71 against Koiwai’s fighting 72.
In victory, Yuka totaled a magnificent 13-under 275 in four grueling rounds of the Nitori Ladies Open at Otaru Country Club in Hokkaido. The win quickly erased doubts her earlier triumph in the NEC Karuizawa Open was a fluke.
The Sunday battle became really almost exclusively between Saso and Koiwai as three other foes nearest to Yuka were 10 shots away tied in third place: Kana Mikashima (71), Lee Ji-Hee (74) and Mayu Hamada (76).
For someone to get cut in her pro debut in the ISPS Handa Classic last June bouncing back to win in back-to-back fashion, hey, that says a lot of the kid who won the Asiad golf gold in 2018 with a daring last-hole eagle three from the fringe.
So young, so aged.
THAT’S IT LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers completed their four-game sweep on Sunday for a 4-1 series victory over the Portland Trail Blazers in the National Basketball Association West first-round playoffs. The Lakers face the winner in the Houston-Oklahoma series. The Thunder rallied yesterday behind last-second heroics by Chris Paul to defeat the Rockets 104-100 and extend their playoffs to a Game Seven.