Missed

Bacolod City – A few days ago, we were looking at the class picture of the ‘Golden Boys’ reminiscing our coverage of the 50th Philippine Airlines Interclub here in Bacolod City 11 years ago.

When the topic turned to memories of friends who were lost, we realized that many of us from that group that covered the tournament have already gone ahead.

Among them are PAL’s Joe Miraflor, Atty. Manny Oyson of Cebu, Peter Alegre formerly of the Journal Group, and Davao’s Ferdie ‘Batman’ Lintuan, who was recently killed in an ambush.

I once shared a room with Atty. Oyson during the early years of my coverage of this tournament.  Joe, who we fondly called Joekal (Joe Kalbo) was one of the staff of the publicity committee that attended to our needs.

Peter and I often played on the same flight in the golf tournaments while Batman (Batang Mandaya) was always ready to help.  In fact, a few years ago I asked for Batman to help out one of my friends, NM Elwin Retanal, who was in Davao, and he surely found a way to extend assistance.

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I thought the sad stories would just be limited to looking back, but when I got to the pressroom here at the Negros Occidental Golf and Country Club yesterday, there was one more coming – an email from my compadre Al Mendoza, who now is a ‘full-time freelancer’ informing me of the death of one of the icons of Philippine sports journalism, Zacarias ‘Taby’ Tabaniag yesterday morning.

Uncle Taby, as he asked me to call him instead of the very formal Mr. Tabaniag, was also among the Golden Boys (the group that covered the 50th PAL Interclub).  He was 88 years old.

He was one of the founders of the Philippine Sportswriters Association (PSA) back in 1949 and was a noted golf rulesman.

Uncle Taby had many friends in Cebu and will definitely be missed by the Philippine golf community and the sportswriting fraternity. 

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Gone are the days when the PAL Interclub was something that Cebu teams go to just to play golf and have fun.

One thing that the skippers of Cebu teams are talking about is strategy and fielding the right set of players to match the course that would be played.

Montito Garcia of Cebu Country Club talked about this since we were back home in Cebu.  Over here, Alta Vista’s Vic Gocela said the same and so had Ret. Gen. Rodante Joya of Mactan.

It seems that the strategy is working as early results that came in show Cebu Country Club and Mactan sharing the second spot in the Founders Division just a point behind co-host Negros Occidental.

The next three days will be very exciting and that only means one thing, this coverage won’t be a vacation.  But then that makes the job of covering this event worthwhile.