My 21 straight years in the PAL Interclub
The ongoing PAL Interclub in Davao is its 77th staging. When a tournament is played that many times, the most permanent and constant feature would have to be change. And if you’ve been part of it long enough, sometimes you may still be around to see these changes come full circle.
I made my Interclub debut in Davao 2003 playing for the 10-man strong Cebu Country Club (CCC) team, as its reigning club champion. In the 5-to-play 4-to-count format, we fielded the same players the first two days so they could fly home early to return to their day jobs. Then the remaining five players finished off the last two days.
We won the Founders Division that year to complete our first three-peat. A second three-peat followed after wins in Bacolod 2005, Davao 2006, and Cagayan 2007. Another win in Davao 2009 capped CCC’s dominant run of 7 titles in 9 years in the division that was only the second highest.
The top division was the Championship, which featured rival clubs Canlubang and Manila Southwoods. Both were composed mostly of national team level players recruited to be part of their respective training pools who would represent them in team events. Only teams like these, which were bannered predominantly by aspiring pros who golfed every day, possessed the realistic chances to win the overall championship.
That changed in Cagayan 2011 when tournament chairman Buddy Resurrecion, seeking more field parity, introduced a mandatory team scoring average cap that prevented the concentration of too many elite players in any single team. This forced the disbandment of those past dominant teams.
The Interclub’s new main protagonists became teams of club members with day jobs – perhaps truer to the original spirit of the Interclub. As a result, CCC moved up to the Championship Division where we carried over our winning ways with back-to-back crowns in Davao 2012 and Cebu 2013.
Then major changes once again rocked the Interclub in Bacolod 2014. PAL replaced Resurrecion’s group with a new set of tournament organizers led by Henry Arabelo. It took a couple of transitional years before they could leave their imprint and put into full swing the changes the new group envisioned.
In 2016, the Interclub went to Luzon for the first time this century when Pampanga hosted. Individual award trophies were increased. The International Trophy was established to recognize the best abroad-based team. After a decades-long tradition of having only four divisions, the Aviators’ Division was created in between the Founders and the Sportswriters Divisions to become its fifth.
The previous team scoring average cap was eliminated and official handicaps became the new basis for team classification. With previous limitations to team makeup gone, new recruitment programs like Eastridge and Luisita emerged to challenge the re-established Manila Southwoods in the Championship Division.
CCC was once again relegated to the Founders where we won again in Pampanga 2016. While I did not know it then, it marked the last time I was a part of a winning CCC team. Shifting priorities and the dreaded putting yips thereafter hindered me from sustaining a golfing level where I could still contribute meaningfully to CCC.
But I still possessed enough game and winning experience to help a lower-tier club. My other home club, Club Filipino Inc De Cebu, welcomed me to their team in 2018. We won emphatically in the Cebu-hosted Interclub years with titles in the newly minted third-tier Aviators’ Division in 2019, and the fourth-tier Sportswriters’ Division in 2023.
Then Cagayan 2024 brought another seismic change to the Men’s Interclub. In an apparent effort to increase the number of participating teams, the organizers whittled down the team composition from ten players to eight converting the competition into a 4-to-play 3-to-count format. Teams struggled to adapt to these changes and expressed their dissent.
Annual qualifying tournaments, board-approved budgets, and travel arrangements designed for ten-player headcounts had already become an established practice by most participating clubs after decades of repetition. The downsizing to eight players forced teams to scramble and recalibrate. Team dynamics were also greatly affected because dinners, meetings, and gatherings now had two less talking heads who had to be left off the roster.
I felt that Cagayan 2024 was the least joyful Interclub I played. With fewer teammates around, there was considerably less energy and enthusiasm. That experience made me lose motivation to play the Interclub again under an eight-man team composition. I did not attempt to qualify for any Cebu team anymore, fully expecting it would be the end of my involvement with the Interclub.
Then came an invitation to play the PAL Media Tournament in Bacolod 2025, perhaps in recognition of my long-standing contributions to Inquirer Golf and to our community newspaper Sunstar Cebu. There, I saw a familiar face by the putting green: Buddy Resurrecion who was was back running the Interclub after over a decade away.
This year in Davao 2026, Buddy still remains at the helm. Presumably taking into account player feedback from the past two years, his group just announced the first major change to the Interclub: the 10-man team composition of 5-to-play and 4-to-count will be back.
What will not be making a comeback is the team scoring average cap that was removed by Buddy’s successors. Thus, the contending teams in the Championship Division will probably still be those composed of mostly recruited players. After all, that is how it had always been in the past until Buddy changed it briefly.
This Davao 2026 Interclub seems to be a theme of full-circle situations: from Buddy’s comeback, to the return of the 10-man team composition, to the maintenance of the scoring cap elimination, and to Davao City hosting once more. It could have been a comeback story for me too because I am once again qualified to play for the team I started with, CCC, in the same venue where I made my Interclub debut in 2003. However, I begged off playing this year to explore other pursuits. This effectively ends my Interclub participation streak.
It was my absolute privilege, golfing highlight, and unique distinction to be part of 21 consecutive PAL Interclubs as a member of a winning Cebu team ten times across four different divisions. I have seen the tournament grow, evolve, morph, and transform throughout those memorable times.
Yet I may have also been around long enough – maybe too long – that I see many of these changes coming full circle to where the old becomes the new once more when the past and present converge.
