Early control at stake as Pueblo de Oro leg gets going
Jhonnel Ababa hopes to ride sharp form for yet another week and become the first back-to-back winner in the PGT this season when the P2.5-million ICTSI Pueblo de Oro Championship gets off the ground in Cagayan de Oro, where the revered Frankie Miñoza makes his tour return.
The 42-year-old is listed as the man to beat in the 72-hole championship that starts Monday as he shoots for a follow-up win after triumphing at Sta. Barbara in Iloilo two Sundays ago by besting practically the same field that will be in the first Mindanao stop.
“I just hope to get it all going again, like I have luckily gotten to do the past few weeks,” Ababa told the Inquirer over the phone in Filipino after sampling the layout in the Pro-Am on Sunday. “But it’s really not all about hitting it well. Somehow, the stars really have to align for you to win.”
Before snapping a long title drought with a one-shot win in Iloilo, Ababa had come close to winning the week before that, only to be denied by Art Arbole, whose victory Ababa partly aided when he crumbled in the final few holes.
Arbole will also be in the field this week, together with Jeff Lumbo, who has finished second in the last two stops, and Miñoza, who plays for the first time this season after battling an undisclosed illness last year.
Lumbo is trying to win for just the second time in his career, which could come a few weeks short of the first anniversary of his maiden victory last year at South Pacific in Davao.
And Lumbo sees winning the same way Ababa does.
“I just hope that every part of my game works again so that I again get the chance to win,” Lumbo said in Filipino. “I am not thinking of those back-to-back close calls. I will use this week to have fun playing the game.”
Meanwhile, the P1-million Ladies PGT side of the event also gets going, with Yvon Bisera, after failing to get a visa to play in the China Open, setting out as the prohibitive pick also owing to the very previous form that made her the top Filipino finisher in the Kenda Tires Women’s Open in Taiwan.
Sarah Ababa, the reigning Order of Merit champion, is the likely challenger with some of the other big guns in the women’s circuit playing overseas and skipping their third-to-last event of the season.
