Difficult TCC awaits Ardina’s return
More than 10 years after her last stint on a local course and on the heels of probably the most controversial Olympics brouhaha, Dottie Ardina is back, excited and full of confidence heading into the $200,000 ICTSI Worldwide Link Philippine Ladies Masters at The Country Club (TCC) in Laguna.
“Yes, it has been a long time, 2015 [was the last year I played here] or maybe even the year before, on the LPGT,” Ardina told the Inquirer over the phone as she leads a formidable PH cast that will be pitted against the best of the Korea LPGA Dream Tour and the LPGA of Taiwan starting on Wednesday.
“There’s nothing like playing at home,” the Paris Olympian, who grew up in Canlubang just a few kilometers away from TCC, said. “I am very excited to play, of course. Excited to represent the Philippines, in a way, again, because it’s an international tournament.”
Ardina will be coming off a 19th-place finish in a tournament in Indonesia last week and will take a lot of Epson Tour-LPGA Tour experience into the 54-hole event where Pauline del Rosario, Princess Superal and the seasoned Chihiro Ikeda, among other Filipinos, are also seeing action.
The 31-year-old Ardina, together with Bianca Pagdanganan, played for flag and country in France last year, a stint that was tainted by that infamous uniform snafu that went viral and hogged sports headlines back home for several days.
She refused to make any predictions for the coming week other than giving it her best, putting into account how that TCC layout, reportedly redesigned into a heck of a challenge by golf patron Ricky Razon, will be one beast impossible to tame.
“If they set it up to be difficult, it will be very difficult,” Ardina said. “Don’t expect to see many under-par scores if that’s the case. The course is long with a lot of narrow holes. And the winds will definitely be in play.”
The TCC will play to something a little over 6,000 yards for that tournament, far from the 7,200 yards that punished the elite The Country Club field, which South Korean Minwook Gwon won in a playoff over Guido van der Valk of the Netherlands last week. Regulation ended at three-over-par 291 for 72 holes.
