MANILA Southwoods simmered with 128 points on Wednesday but saw its lead balloon to 31 points in the Fil Championship division of the 69th Fil-Am Invitational Golf Tournament at the Baguio Country Club (BCC) course.
The young guns did the job for Southwoods with Yuto Katsuragawa submitting a team-best 34 points, Aidric Chan adding 33, Carl Corpus a 32 and Aguri Iwasaki a 29.
The team’s senior player, Junjun Plana, was off anew and didn’t count with a 28, but Southwoods totaled 266 which looked strong enough to retain the crown in the premiere division.
Royal Northwoods made 119 for the day and drifted away from the pace with 235 points. The team drew 30 points from Luigi Paolo Wong, Carlo Villaroman and Raymund Sangil and 29 from Richard Joson.
Forest Hills-Puma, meanwhile, had 33 from Inigo Raymundo and 32 Jude Eustaquio for a 124, enough to cut Northwoods’s lead to five with 231 points. Rocky Co and former national amateur champion Rupert Zaragosa adding 30 and 29, respectively, for Royal Northwoods.
Mizuno—X-1R may have improved on the second day shooting 108 points to amass 207 for fourth spot.
The teams take a break before raking on the longer Camp John Hay (CJH) course on Friday.
“That’s a big lead, it’s not that we are giving up but with the caliber of players Southwoods has, we just hope to finish with a respectable score,” Forest Hills captain Eustaquio said.
“It will be fun and we know that Dodong [Zaragosa] will have some firepower there,” Eustaquio added.
Eustaquio hopes that their game will get “a little better each day” as they also narrowed the gap with Northwoods from nine to four.
Southwoods also made a strong presence in the Am, Championship and with 130 for the day, totaled 277 points for a 36-point lead over surging Batangas Barakos. They are on course to matching their 50-point victory last year.
Lanz Uy, Josh Jorge and 14-year-old Masaichi Otake made 34 points each, while 13-year old Jeff Jung added 29 for Southwoods. Liam Cully carded 27 and did not count.
“This is a pretty young team with a 13-year-old and two 14-year-old players—because we want to train new ones. With Aidric and Carl leaving for the United States next year, we want to have somebody to replace them and any of the young guys will be the replacement,” Southwoods captain Thirdy Escano said.
Ricky de los Santos was one over 70 on Wednesday for 35 points to lead Batangas Barakos’s 124-point effort that netted them a 241 to overtake first-round second placer Philippine Navy (111 and 231).
Michael Mendoza made 33, Gary Sales equaled his first round 30 and Takuya Kawamura chipped in 26 to count for the Barakos.
Demitrio Sanchez paced Navy with 32 for 111 points, which was three off Forest Hills Nicklaus that submitted 116 on Rodel Mangalubnan’s 33 for 228 points.
Razons of Guagua matched its first day total of 109 for 218 points at fifth spot.