Saturday, July 21, 2007 Top golfers face off today at CCC
THE country’s top golf professional will face today a top player eyeing a comeback to competitive play at the Cebu Country Club.
The Y101 Golf Showdown will feature the country’s top professional, Juvic Pagunsan, against Marlon Dizon. The event is co-presented by Y101 and the Cebu Country Club Junior Golf Program.
The competitors will play a modified skins format where there will be no carry-over. If a hole is halved, the tie will be resolved via a shootout, where both players will hit from a designated spot in the same hole and the closest to the hole wins it.
Both Pagunsan and Dizon were national team mainstays and have earned gold mdeals for the country in the Southeast Asian Games and championships for themselves in the DHL Open. Both players eventually became touring professionals. But their similarities end there.
Pagunsan won virtually every major amateur event locally and in Asia while Dizon, despite his pro status, used his Ateneo college degree to focus on his business interests.
Pagunsan went on to become the country’s top golfer and a superstar in the Asian Tour when he bagged rookie of the year honors last year. He became the first Filipino in 5 years to compete in a PGA Tour event when he played the Sony Open in Hawaii earlier this year against the likes of Vijay Singh, Jim Furyk, Michelle Wie, and David Toms.
Dizon, on the other hand, is keen on making a comeback to competitive golf and is looking to get his jumpstart with this event. He only played three professional tournaments this year, including the Philippine Open where after two days Dizon was in the leaderboard while Pagunsan missed the cut. He also finished in the money in The Country Club Invitational while Pagunsan withdrew. Dizon’s game is now rounding to top form as he looks to compete in the Asian Tour Qualifying School later this year.
And although it seems like an exhibition match on paper, Pagunsan is not taking this event lightly. “Marlon has been my teammate and good friend since the amateur days and he is a very good player,” said Pagunsan who has been here since Thursday to familiarize himself with the tricky greens of Cebu Country Club.
This will mark the first time in the country where two local professional golfers will be pitted head-to-head and one-on-one in a match of this magnitute. “I hope this is the first of many events of this kind in the country and that other golf clubs and organizations will pick up on this,” said Dizon.
“The main objective of this event is to expose our junior golfers to the high caliber brand of play these two will bring,” said CCC junior golf chairman Jovi Neri. “It has been a long time since there was a pro tournament in Cebu so juniors only see pros on TV. It will greatly inspire them to see these pros up-close.” (PR)
