PH women look to add Hanoi gold to international streak

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Members of the Philippine golf team warm up before training. —JONG ARCANO

HANOI—A rock-solid women’s team bannered by the brilliant Rianne Malixi will try to keep a string of international successes going for Team Philippines when golf competitions in the 31st Southeast Asian (SEA) Games tees off on Friday at Heron Lake Golf course.

A winner of two pro events back home, Malixi arrived here fresh from impressive stints in the United States and will be joined by LK Go and Mafy Singson as the Filipinos will try to tab another major win after the 2018 Asian Games sweep and the triumph in the 2019 edition of the SEAG in Manila.

Go was actually part of those gold medal-winning teams, having joined Yuka Saso and Bianca Pagdanganan in Jakarta before helping Pagdanganan together with Abby Arevalo in Manila.

A men’s team led by former junior world champion Kristoffer Arevalo will also see action, though the men’s team, which also has Jet Hernandez, Jed Dy and Gab Manotoc, will be battling some of the best in the Asian region in the Thailand team.

The first three days will be for the battle for individual honors, the results of which will be used for the seedings in the match play team event that will be played from Monday to Wednesday.

National coach Miko Alejandro said they came prepared.

“Everyone is in high spirits and individual games are trending in the right direction,” Alejandro, a former national ace himself, said. “We’ve been working hard in our preparation but making sure we also don’t forget to enjoy every moment. All players can’t wait to tee it up.”

Alejandro also said the other countries, specially Singapore and Indonesia, have made inroads in recent years and are capable of coming up with a worthy challenge.