All aboard
PGA Tour campaigner Rico Hoey has committed to play for the Asian Games this coming September and will lead what could be the strongest Philippine challenge in the golf competitions of since a glorious Philippine sweep of the women’s division gold medals and an individual bronze in Jakarta, Indonesia eight years ago.
Hoey, currently ranked 83rd in the world, has accepted the invite from the National Golf Association of the Philippines (NGAP) sent him this week for his second call of national duty 13 years after powering the country to the Putra Cup crown at Sherwood Hills Golf Club.
The rest of the contingent is made up of the Who’s Who in Philippine professional golf.
Also committing for the men’s team are LIV Golf Tour campaigner Miguel Tabuena and Japan Tour regular Justin delos Santos.
The women’s team, meanwhile, has also secured the commitments from professional Bianca Pagdanganan and Pauline del Rosario and amateur sensation Rianne Malixi, now playing for Duke University in the US NCAA where she was just named Women’s Golf Coaches Association (WGCA) Division I Freshman of the Year for the 2025-26 season.
Pagdanganan, now competing in the ShopRite Classic of the LPGA Tour, and del Rosario will both tee up in the 81st U.S. Women’s Open golf championship at The Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades, California.
It will be the same course that will host 2028 Summer Olympics with Pagdanganan eyeing her third straight stint in the quadrennial games.
Hoey, meanwhile, could have bannered the country’s campaign in the 2024 Paris Olympics but a snafu in the processing of his eligibility with the International Olympic Committee and International Golf Federation prevented the Fil-American from playing.
The Philippines has so far won three gold medals, two silvers and three bronzes since golf was introduced as a medal sport in the Asian Games in 1982 in the New Delhi edition.
Three of those medals were won in Indonesia by the ladies squad led by Yuka Saso, still then carrying a Filipino citizenship. Saso won the individual gold and also powered the Philippine team to another gold with Pagdanganan salvaging the individual bronze.
Ramon Brobio accounted for three including the country’s first gold in the 1986 edition where he also shared the team bronze and then a bronze four years later in his defense four years later in Beijing, China.
Brobio, incidentally, will be back in the Asiad fold this time as the national coach.
Rosales captured a silver medal in the 1998 Bangkok, Thailand meet and then Tabuena also snagged the same color in the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou, China.
With traditional powerhouses Japan, Korea also expected to field their stars campaigning on the PGA Tour and LPGA Tour, the Philippines should have enough firepower to challenge in both divisions of the Nagoya Asian Games.
