Tour chief hails new beginning
Blue Canyon Country Club will stage on of its biggest tournaments next week when the Blue Canyon Phuket Championship is played there from November 25-28, and no one is more excited than the club’s Chairman Mr. Praphant Asava-aree.
“We are proud that Blue Canyon has a long history and legacy with international competition,” said Mr Praphant.
“And we are trying to bring that back so that Blue Canyon can be the most iconic course in Thailand. So, we are extremely proud to host an Asian Tour event to help us achieve our goals.”
The US$1million tournament, to be played on the Canyon Course, marks the restart of the Asian Tour following a 19-month break because of COVID-19.
A stellar field has entered including reigning Asian Tour Order of Merit champion Jazz Janewattananond from Thailand, Australia’s Scott Hend, who has claimed 10-titles on the Asian Tour, John Catlin from the United States ‒ a three-time winner on the European Tour ‒ Malaysian number one Gavin Green, and a host of other marquee names.
The unmistakable 18th at Blue Canyon. Picture by Paul Lakatos/Asian Tour.
“Referring to the Sandbox initiative by the local government, this was key in allowing players to come here and compete without quarantine. This was a huge plus for Phuket,” added Mr Praphant.
“We have to thank the people of Phuket, the Governor and the Tourism Authority of Thailand for the bold decision they made to open up Phuket. I think in this pandemic Phuket has been doing quite well since the Sandbox started in July, and now we have opened up more since November 1. And we are confident things will get better.”
The club hosted back-to-back events on the All Thailand Golf Tour and Thailand PGA Tour in September but next week will mark the first time it has hosted an international event since the 2007 Johnnie Walker Classic – an Asian Tour, European Tour and PGA Tour of Australasia tri-sanctioned tournament won by Anton Haig from South Africa.
“The golf club has been doing well. The local events we staged were very successful and we have been happy with how things have developed,” said the Chairman.
“We closed down for one-month last year following government regulations. But we have used this whole period of downtime to improve the quality of the course and its playing surfaces. We renovated everything on the Canyon Course: fairways, tee boxes, everything. We have been working very hard on the greens to get them ready for the tournament. Four days rain, three days sun has meant it has not been easy to get the greens prepared but we have been working on it slowly and patiently.”
The Club, which celebrated its 30th anniversary last month, also hosted the Johnnie Walker Classic in 1994 when Australian great Greg Norman beat Fred Couples from the United States by a shot; and, also in 1998 the year that American Tiger Woods defeated South Africa’s Ernie Els in a memorable sudden-death play-off.
The famous penultimate hole at Blue Canyon. Picture by Paul Lakatos/Asian Tour.
The Asian Tour was also there in 1996 for the Honda City Invitational, won by Australian Steve Elkington, and in 2005 for the Thailand Open, where New Zealand’s Richard Lee took the title.
Added Mr Praphat: “We are planning more events, and we are discussing this with a lot of organisers, and of course we hope that Asian Tour will come back!”
Robin Bose from thegolfinghub.com, in India, reports that the Classic Golf & Country Club – venue for the Classic Golf & Country Club International Championship and an Asian Tour Destinations member ‒ has weathered the COVID storm well.
It isn’t for nothing that the Classic Golf & Country Club was declared the safest golf course in the National Capital Region during the pandemic.
Ensconced at the foothills of the Aravalli Mountain ranges in Haryana’s Mewat district, not far from the capital New Delhi, this 27-hole Jack Nicklaus signature course was a first in South Asia when it came up, and with time has maintained the exclusive tag. It’s not just the layout that makes the 300-acre facility unique; the work ethic of the workforce is top-notch as well. This came to the fore again with the way operations were handled after the golf course reopened following the first and second phases of lockdown in the space of a year.
There were a couple of mantras that drove the campaign to prove “golf is the safest sport in these times”, and along the way stringent steps ensured that not a single staff or club member tested positive for the virus.
Keshav Kumar, DGM (Marketing and Sales) was at the forefront of this drive. “My chief concern was if I could keep my staff safe, the members would be healthy too. It was better to take extra precautions than to regret later,” he said.
The measures pressed into action did evoke resentment from some quarters initially given the uncertain times, but there was no budging by the authorities. A lot of research went into formulating the policies as well as inputs from the parent company ITC’s COVID command centre.
Rory Hie won the 2019 Classic Golf & Country Club International Championship to become the first Indonesian winner on the Asian Tour.
Atop the to-do list was to ensure the golf course was in prime condition when members returned after the first reopening last year. A small workforce was stationed at the facility for maintenance and a quarantine centre set up nearby to test personnel on return as the situation started to ease.
Soon, it was time to throw open the gates to members. Those coming in after booking their tee-time on the club’s app were subjected to temperature checks and had to produce proof (via the Indian government’s health app Aarogya Setu) that they were safe to proceed after sanitization of their cars.
All through, the endeavour was to ensure social distancing/minimum contact. Golfers were expected to park and hop on to a cart from a designated spot and head to the clubhouse. Once at the pro shop, payments were accepted by scanning the bar code. It was one golfer to a cart and tee times were advanced to ensure there was a 15-minute gap between groups. Members could carry food, but items they got from home. Water was available on course, placed on racks at vantage points for pickup. After the round, golfers had to leave the cart at a designated spot for a four-stage sanitation process. This involved four personnel in PPE suits first spraying sanitizer, followed by water and air being applied at high pressure. The final stage was about fogging the vehicle and aligning it in the parking lot. The carts took a hit, especially the electricals, a result of the cleansing, but nothing could be left to chance.
Among the list of don’ts was using the spa and locker rooms, raking of bunkers and access to caddies, who were engaged as spotters during this phase. To keep a check on exposure, golf course personnel were divided into two teams and worked on alternate days.
Given the skepticism, footfall fell but the inflow was consistent, and numbers rose with time as word spread about the measures in place to ensure a safe round of golf at a course that showed the way to cope with a crisis of unprecedented proportions.
Thailand’s Pavit Tangkamolprasert says he is completely focused on finishing in the top-30 on the Asian Tour Order of Merit so that he earns a place in next year’s US$5million Saudi International powered by SoftBank Investment Advisers ‒ the Tour’s new season-opening flagship event.
The two-time Asian Tour winner returned this week from a three-month stint in the US where he made it to the second stage of the Korn Ferry Tour Qualifying School and is now preparing for the Asian Tour Phuket Series, which starts at the end of this month.
“I am very happy the Asian Tour is restarting – I know the Tour has been working very hard to get back,” said Pavit.
“It’s amazing for Thailand that the Tour is restarting in my country with back-to-back events in Phuket and then to have the Saudi International become part of the Tour is really good news – I am really focused on getting into the top-30 on the Order of Merit to get into that event. I am now 21st [on the Merit list] so it’s going to be very, very close. Every tournament means a lot.”
The Blue Canyon Phuket Championship tees-off from November 25 to 28 on the Canyon Course at Blue Canyon Country Club, while the Laguna Phuket Championship will be staged the following week at Laguna Golf Phuket.
Both events boast prizemoney of US$1million and will be followed by two events being planned in Singapore in January that will bring to a conclusion, the 2020-21 season.
The Saudi International will commence the 2022 season in February and feature the top-30 players from the final Merit list.
Pavit added: “And if I can win in Phuket it also means a lot as I am playing in my home country. I am completely focused on the Asian Tour, I have nothing to worry about, I can’t wait. We’ve stopped playing since March last year.”
The 32 year old says playing in the US has made him a stronger player.
“I was pretty happy with the result actually,” he commented.
“I didn’t make it but it’s my first professional events in America. It’s a new experience there.”
The Thai star made it through stage one in Arizona but struggled with the cold weather and tough golf course at the second stage in New Mexico.
“I made a mistake on picking the course in New Mexico. I played well in Arizona – the weather is like Asia. I should have picked Florida. New Mexico is like one or two degrees in the morning, and I couldn’t feel my hands. I practiced in Florida with Kiradech [Aphibarnrat] and I practiced on Bermuda grass there, but when I went to New Mexico it’s Bent grass. It’s completely different.”
The US trip also meant he was able to spend more time with his wife, Chorpaka Jaengkit, as she is also a Tour professional, and they are normally thousands of miles apart. She plays on the Symetra Tour in the US – although she received a medical exemption.
“I am pretty confident [heading into Phuket]. I played against some high-quality players in the US and learned a lot. I can’t wait to compete and play on the grass here, it’s different, it’s Thailand,” said Pavit, who has also won a record seven times on the Asian Development Tour.
In the first of this year’s engaging series of “Our Time” videos ‒ a collaboration with Tour partner Rolex ‒ Thailand’s Jazz Janewattananond talks about his love of the Asian Tour, the early days and the pandemic.
Jazz Janewattananond, the reigning Asian Tour Order of Merit champion, says he hopes the Asian Tour can be “one of the global Tours” now that it is about to restart and that the only way to deal with the pandemic was to “power through it”.
The Thai star has been playing on the European Tour this year but is preparing for the Asian Tour’s restart in Phuket at the end of November.
“When I heard the Asian Tour is on, I felt like things are going to be back to normal,” said Jazz, in his “Our Time” video.
“Everything is going to be fine you know, it’s just one of those things, that means our region is improving, the pandemic situation in Asia is improving because they are allowing us to set up tournaments, and the Asian Tour is doing better. It’s just a win-win situation for the players, the Tour and the region.”
The 26 year old will compete in both Asian Tour Phuket Series events: first the Blue Canyon Phuket Championship from November 25-28 and then the Laguna Phuket Championship, from December 2-5.
These events were announced recently and will help bring the curtain down on the 2020-21 season, while just last Friday the Tour revealed that its 2022 schedule will boast 10 new events that will form a new series of tournaments each boasting prizemoney of US$1million and above.
“My hope for the Asian Tour in the future is that we can be one of the global Tours that can compete with any Tour on earth, really looking forward to it,” added Jazz.
Like all players, the Thai star’s schedule was hampered by the pandemic, but he found a way to deal with the situation.
“When the pandemic hit it was really hard for us,” he said.
“Where I come from in Thailand, it was really hard, the country was shut down. We could not go back home, everyone was facing the similar situation, but you gotta move on and power through it.”
Jazz is a six-time winner on the Asian Tour ‒ four of which came in 2019 ‒ and is grateful for the opportunities it afforded to him
“The Asian Tour is where it started: the whole golf professional process. I played the first one when I was 12 or 13, I can’t remember. When you play Asian Tour it’s more like you are going out, hanging out with your friends,” he said.
His first win on the Asian Tour came at the 2017 Bashundhara Bangladesh Open. But it was back in 2010 when he first made a name for himself when he became the youngest player ever, at age 14 years 71 days, to make the halfway cut in an Asian Tour event at Asian Tour International in Bangkok, as an amateur.
“It’s the vibe there [on the Asian Tour], everyone is friends, you go there to enjoy your week, you stay in the same hotel, you take a bus to the golf course. So, there is a connection there with me and my golf, and childhood and Asian Tour. We kind of all grew up together,” said the Thai.
“It’s great to have a Tour in our region that is really well run and very good to improve young players like me. If I didn’t have Asian Tour I don’t know where my career will be at.”
‘S-HERTOGENBOSCH, NETHERLANDS – SEPTEMBER 16: Jazz Janewattananond of Thailand tees off the first hole during Day One of the Dutch Open at Bernardus Golf on September 16, 2021 in Cromvoirt, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands. (Photo by Octavio Passos/Getty Images)
Two-time Asian Tour winner Miguel Tabuena says he is in the best shape of his life as he prepares for the forthcoming Asian Tour Phuket Series, thanks to extensive work with Dr. Harry Sese ‒ the strength and conditioning coach of world number one Jon Rahm from Spain.
The Filipino star has been based in Bellevue, Washington, for most of the pandemic period and has also been practicing regularly with PGA Tour player Cam Davis from Australia.
“I have been playing quite a bit with Cam and we both work with Harry Sese,” said Tabuena.
“I am close to him and he is a fellow Filipino as well. He is the number one guy of Jon Rahm. So, I have been looked after very well here in the States.
“I am a bit rusty but the most fit right now in my career. It’s one of the positives I got from the pandemic set back.”
The Asian Tour Phuket Series starts with the Blue Canyon Phuket Championship from November 25-28, followed the week after by the Laguna Phuket Championship. The two US$1 million tournaments are part of the 2020-21 season ending events, with two final ones planned for Singapore in January.
HONG KONG, CHINA – JANUARY 11: Miguel Tabuena of Philippines tees off during the third round of the Hong Kong Open at the Hong Kong Golf Club on January 11, 2020 in Hong Kong. (Photo by Yu Chun Christopher Wong/Eurasia Sport Images/Getty Images)
Tabuena has been starved of playing opportunities because of the pandemic, but when he has competed he has seized the opportunity, including winning an event in September run by the PGA of America.
He added: “Playing practice rounds with myself and Cam is a no brainer; I can shoot six or seven under with my eyes closed but when it’s actually tournament play it’s very much different, you are under pressure with your score counting, and world ranking points on the line.”
The 27-year-old from Manila was thrilled when he heard the Asian Tour would restart this month.
“It was really good to hear from Cho [Cho Minn Thant] that things were going to start to move again on the Asian Tour, so I have been preparing quite a bit. It is great for us who have full playing status on the Asian Tour. It is going to be great playing again and I am very much excited as I miss my friends on the Asian Tour.
“It will be great to see everyone, all the staff as well, who I have been very close to for the past 10 years since I have been on Tour. It will be great to see those faces again.
“But I am just grateful that we get to play golf again especially in Asia and be part of this new partnership with Greg Norman!”
He said his game could be better but as of now he is pretty much ready for Phuket.
He has a Monday qualifier for the Houston Open next week and will fly to Phuket on November 18.
“My expectations are not that high going to Phuket,” he added.
“Maybe I will contend and maybe I will not, but I won’t make a big deal out of it. It’s the first tournament back and I am glad to be part of it.”
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