Golfers aim to thrive on familiar ground

Golfers aim to thrive on familiar ground

Experience and familiarity.

Team Singapore will be relying on those two factors when they set out to win golf gold at the South-east Asia (SEA) Games here in June.

The squad are made up of seven golfers - four men and three women.

Marc Ong, Jonathan Woo and Abdul Hadi Uda Thith were all members of the men's quartet who finished fourth at the 2013 Games in Myanmar.

They will be joined by Johnson Poh, who was part of the 2009 team which bagged a silver in the team event in Laos.

The women's team will be made up of Koh Sock Hwee, Goh Jen and Amanda Tan.

The men's team finished with a total score of 858 two years ago, with Thailand (838), Myanmar (846) and Malaysia (848), filling the top three spots.

They aim to do far better on a course they are far more familiar with.

Golf will be held at Sentosa Golf Club's Serapong Course from June 9 to 12, and will feature four competitions: the men's and women's individual events and the two team contests.

Serapong course is a tough course, but Koh, for one, is no stranger to it, having made her second appearance there last month at the HSBC Women's Champions event.

She was "adopted" by the Sentosa club in mid-2013 and has full access to the facilities.

The challenging course would likely favour the Singapore contingent as they vie for honours.

Said Singapore Golf Association general manager Peter Teo: "We are going for gold. That is the target given by our president (Bob Tan) to the players and the coaches."

The golfers will be busy before the Games, with the men playing two tournaments in Malaysia next month, while the women will take part in the prestigious Queen Sirikit Cup in Hong Kong.


This article was first published on April 19, 2015.
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