THE PAL Interclub will soon conclude its 76th edition with organizers having reason to pat each other’s backs for what is certain to be another successful event.
Year after year, the event has gathered the best amateur players in the land to compete for personal honor and team glory.
This year is no different. Now just a few years from reaching eight decades, the allure of competition has not diminished.
A total of 171 teams, 72 in the men’s division and 99 in the seniors, with a count of nearly 1,500 golfers — all have descended on Bacolod City. They come from various corners of the globe, including seldom-travelled spots in the country where unknown to many people are hitting golf balls.
Boost to the host city
Their presence has a beneficial effect on the city, boosting its economy, bringing joy to hoteliers, restaurants, malls, transport companies, caddies and umbrella girls.
It’s two weeks of spirited action at two venues.
One is the Bacolod Golf Club, which is outside the city, with the course surrounded by nice rice fields.
The other is the Negros Occidental Golf and Country Club, located at the belly of the highly urbanized capital, with eateries, small dwellings, mini markets, and constant traffic with some pollution.
At both venues, the event is akin to a family gathering. Many players are familiar with each other because, once they played at the Interclub, the urge to return sticks — and return they do.
That’s especially true in the senior division where year after year the only difference you see with the players is how much they’ve grown around the middle and how much hair they’ve lost.
Another familiar occurrence is the results. Not always happily, the results, especially in the men’s division, are the same — the same teams, if not the same people, contend for the championship.
One actually wishes there would be more teams, a set of different people fighting for the marbles. The same decades-old rivalries get tiring.
Sometimes, a team would break through. Such as Del Monte in the seniors division, which snapped the stranglehold of Luisita and Canlubang just a week ago. In a few days, we will also know if Eastridge is the real thing and will overcome Southwoods, the winner of five of the last six editions of the men’s championship.
At the back of this perennial and occasionally combustible rivalry — among Southwoods, Cebu Country Club, Canlubang, Del Monte, and Luisita — are hundreds of teams and over a thousand players toiling anonymously, trying to break par, and barely succeeding.
The golf course wins all the time, but one really shouldn’t blame the tough layout, one must look at the not-so-tough quality of the field. Because, even with the game of golf booming, with private club memberships peaking, equipment sales soaring, and driving ranges teeming, there has been no corresponding rise in our players’ skills to make them a factor in international events.
One only has to look at our international record. It’s woeful, to say the least. Were it not for the heroics of our women golfers, who in recent times have won the Asian Games gold and made themselves visible on the pro scene, we’d have nothing. Our male amateurs and pros have little to show achievement.
With so few good players on the scene, one can almost see why the fight for PAL Interclub honors has been severely limited to a handful of clubs.
The small number may also be traced to the various clubs’ leadership and ownership. Some have committed their resources, time, personnel, and generous patronage to develop players on a year-long basis with the PAL Interclub as ultimate target.
One can only wish other clubs have the same love for the sport and competition that Del Monte does. Unlike wealthy enclaves like the Manila Golf Club, Wack Wack, The Country Club, Sta. Elena, and Alabang, among others, which spend tens of millions of pesos on golf, but only for their grand and ostentatious member-guest-only events.
Imagine if they just set aside some of the money allotted to their prizes and giveaways to develop strong teams to compete at the highest level of the PAL Interclub. Imagine the competition and the intensity, think of the honor and the bragging rights going to winning clubs.
All of which would make for a real and official national team championship! But short of these clubs committing to a real competition, the much-honored PAL Interclub is not that, yet.
I know these rich clubs want their best players to compete in the other divisions, not necessarily in the championship division. No issues there. But what they can do rather easily is put up two teams — one made up of club members, the other made up of rising young talents recruited from the outside.
These things may need some real adjustment from Interclub organizers. But to help develop the sport, which is one objective of PAL, some rules may have to be revised. To have intense and sustained competition, PAL and the big, rich clubs must join up to commit themselves to a common objective.
Otherwise, next year and the year after that, we will see the same teams fighting for the championship again. And again. And again.
BY THE WAY
Our thanks to Philippine Airlines and to the people at Corporate Communications who left no stone unturned to make members of the media feel at home before, during, and after the annual press tournament.
Kudos to the easygoing CorpCom chief Anne Tiongco, the ever-present Cielo Villaluna, the always dependable Ella Hernandez, Abby Cruz, Nannette Versoza and Charlie Erojo. Many thanks, too, to PAL president Stanley Ng and his buddy, PAL director David Ong who, we were told, saved the Interclub from an unfortunate demise after it landed precariously on the chopping block when the airline moved to cut expenses during the pandemic.
Capt. Stan, a veteran pilot, on the other hand, attended various tournament and media activities, even playing a round as he tried his hand at this confounding and difficult sport. For sure, at this juncture of his golf development, he found flying a plane easier than hitting a ball straight.
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