CEBUANO golf star Charles “Chuckie” Hong starts his bid for a title repeat today but will be up against a loaded field in the ICTSI Sherwood Hills Classic at the Sherwood Hills Golf Club in Cavite.
Premium will be on shotmaking, although the power-hitting Hong used a combination of superb short game and steady putting in thwarting the young Micah Shin and annexing a two-stroke victory in last year’s all-Filipino staging of the P3.5 million event.
But with the event serving as the eighth leg of this year’s ADT, the Asian Tour’s farm league, a number of international players are vying in the 72-hole championship, making it doubly difficult for Hong to score a repeat and the country’s top guns hard-pressed to keep the crown at home.
“I just need to do what I’m doing and I hope I can hang around the leaderboard and then we’ll see what happens,” said Hong, also raring to atone for his failed bid at Eagle Ridge where he missed the cut by one stroke.
“The missed cut doesn’t bother me that much.”