NOT only in Japan but in the United States as well.
That’s where our Filipino athletes are going all this time to show their wares in a bold bid to hit the jackpot.
Some have hit it big already. There’s Juvic Pagunsan and Yuka Saso in golf.
Pagunsan was first, winning the money-rich Mizuno Open to end his 10-year drought on the Japan Tour.
He was not the first Filipino male to make waves in Japan golf.
There was the late Ben Arda from the Sixties to the Seventies. Then came Frankie Minoza from the Eighties to the Nineties.
So outstanding were Arda and Minoza in their Japan jousts that they would earn hard-to-secure invites to the Masters in Augusta, Georgia, the first major of the season held traditionally in April. Sorry, but I can’t restrain myself from saying I covered Minoza’s Masters exploits but not Arda’s as I was still in school then.
Not long after Pagunsan, who was one of my three players when I captained the Philippine team to the 2004 World Team Championships in Rio Grande, Puerto Rico, Saso scored her stunning 76th US Open win at age 19 just weeks before the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
In fashioning out her dramatic win, Saso sailed past early two double bogeys and held off Japan’s Nasa Hataoka in the third hole of a sudden-death playoff to prevail on her third try.
That was worth $1 million (nearly P60 million) for Saso, who pocketed her breakthrough victory at the Olympic Club in San Francisco, California, on June 7.
But before that, Saso had also already joined Pagunsan in the winner’s circle on the Japan Tour. In fact, she had won twice, ramping up her overall winnings thus far too easily nearly P100 million to include several Top 10 finishes in other Japanese tournaments.
Perhaps, Saso’s victories could have gunned up the adrenaline rush on cue artist Carlo Biado, who stole the US Open 9-ball crown in a stunning come-from-behind feat that saw him climb out from a 3-8 rut by implausibly sweeping the last 10 racks to win, 13-8.
With the win, Biado, 37, ended the country’s 17-year losing spree since Efren “Bata” Reyes won the US Open in 2004.
Not to be outdone, Miguel Tabuena sneaked in another Filipino win overseas by topping the Idaho Open, in the process capturing his first golf title on US soil.
Include Hidilyn Diaz’s weightlifting gold to end a 97-year wait of Olympic glory in Tokyo 2020, and the country’s date with galvanizing grandeur on the global stage has been more than achieved.
Santa Claus has come a bit early for our athletes this year.
THAT’S IT Senator Bong Go has called on the country’s athletes and the public in general in need of medical assistance to go to Quezon City’s Malasakit Centers at Lung Center, Novaliches Hospital, Philippine Heart Center, Philippine Children’s Medical Center, National Kidney and Transplant Institute, East Avenue Medical Center, Veterans Hospital, Philippine Orthopedic Center and National Children’s Hospital.