Winning golfers, winning events

After what was a suspenseful two-hour wait, players of Alta Vista Golf and Country Club heaved a sigh of relief last Saturday when the overall club champion of the Santa Lucia Golf Tour 2008 was known.

The team had a commanding lead going to the final stages of the tournament in Manila, but my sources said that the length of the course took out much of the Cebuano firepower allowing Luzon-based teams Eagle Ridge and Orchard to move up.

Eagle Ridge even came very close to upending the Cebuanos, but in the final tally, Alta Vista won the title with a flimsy four-point margin.

The Golf Tour is one of the events that club members look forward to every year. The tournament has taken the players to the three major island groups of the Philippines playing in Davao for the first leg, Cebu for the second and in Luzon for the last two legs that come one day after the other.

Last year, the Golf Tour took a new twist when the group headed to Thailand for the competition.

This is an exclusive event for clubs under the umbrella of Santa Lucia Realty and Development Inc.

Congratulations to the Alta Vista team and I hope you’ll continue to reap more honors in the coming years.

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Three big golf tournaments are taking place one after the other. Tomorrow, the 8th Island Tee opens at the Mactan Island Golf Club in Lapu- Lapu City.

It has been months since we last played at this course laid out inside the Mactan Benito Ebuen Air Base, but our friends who have been there recently keep telling us a lot of good things that are happening in the only public course here in Cebu.

There are lots of hole-in-one prizes at stake and organizers say that they want to make this year’s tournament very memorable. 

More than the prizes and the excitement of playing in the course that keeps surprising me each time I visit, I look forward to being with the happy people of MIGC, who are very passionate about golf like retired General Rodante Joya, who is the club’s general manager.

Next week, the La Salle-Ateneo Golf Classic is set at the Cebu Country Club on Monday and Tuesday. Honestly, I still have to get more details about the event, but there is a lot of excitement among the players because of the rivalry of the two schools.

If you spent at least a year in a La Salle or a Jesuit school, you can qualify to join this tournament. 

The week after next, a Volvo C-30 is up for grabs as a hole-in-one prize on all par-3 holes in the Charity Fun Golf Tournament at the Cebu Country Club. Entry fee is P3,500, but what makes all participants of this event a winner is the fact that several charitable institutions are the beneficiaries of the proceeds.

Well, the fun is there too and there are lots of raffle prizes. The Charity Fun Golf Tournament is a project of the Cebu Friend Forever for Charity Foundation Inc.

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MILESTONE: I’d like to request our pious readers to say a prayer for the soul of my grand aunt Milagros Lebumfacil Rumualdez, who passed away last week and was laid to rest yesterday in Toledo City. She was 88 years old.

May her soul rest in peace!