By Mu­song R. Castillo @mu­songINQ

JAKARTA— Faced with a daunt­ing sec­ond shot from 210 yards on a par-5 fin­ish­ing hole, Yuka Saso had no qualms tak­ing a 4-iron and at­tempt the shot that will de­fine her young ca­reer—and win the in­di­vid­ual event and seal the team cham­pi­onship in the 18th Asian Games.

Bones Floro, the non­play­ing skip­per who helped put this team to­gether, was in a golf cart on the path­way, some 80 yards from Saso’s spot. A crack player him­self, Bones didn’t need to look at the flight of the ball, just Saso’s body lan­guage—or the lack of it.

“We just made his­tory!” Bones de­clared as the gallery that crowded the side of the small, un­du­lat­ing 18th green erupted in frenzy.
Saso’s ball took one bounce near the right green­side bunker be­fore set­tling on the fringe some 18 feet away.

A pin-high putt is left. Very make-able. His­tory was in­deed beck­on­ing.

It was set up by a shot that came from a 17-year-old, a gor­geous swing that will, af­ter a long walk in the mid­dle of the fair­way adorned by cheers from a small Filipino crowd, re­write Philip­pine golf his­tory in the Asian Games.

“I had no doubt on what (club) I wanted to hit. I didn’t have sec­ond thoughts tak­ing the kind of shot I needed to,” Saso told the In­quirer, min­utes af­ter sub­mit­ting a six-un­der­par 66 that keyed the Philip­pines’ golden sweep of women’s golf at Pon­dok In­dah Golf Course here Sun­day af­ter­noon.

Near the green, while Saso was about to putt af­ter study­ing her line in­tently, her Ja­panese fa­ther Masa was a ner­vous wreck, mut­ter­ing in bro­ken Filipino, loud enough for the In­quirer to hear: “Ilapit mo lang (just putt it close). Two putts, panalo pa din tayo (we will still win).”
“I was go­ing to go [hole it] no mat­ter what,” Saso said later.

And just like that, some­thing never be­fore done by the Philip­pines was ac­com­plished by a troika of young ladies in a sport few peo­ple back home ex­pected would give the coun­try its big­gest glory in the 45-na­tion Olympics of the re­gion.

Draped with the PH flag of three stars and a sun, Bianca Pag­dan­ganan and LK Go were whoop­ing it up some­where near the gi­ant score­board.
Pag­dan­ganan did her part, too, by card­ing a sim­i­lar 66.

Go, whom coach Rick Gib­son would later say was the com­i­cal lass who held the team to­gether, failed to count with a 73.
The ladies and the other gold medal­ist, weightlifter Hidi­lyn Diaz, will ar­rive in Manila on Tues­day.

“This is the big­gest thing that has hap­pened to me,” said the 20-year-old Pag­dan­ganan, who helped Univer­sity of Ari­zona to the US NCAA ti­tle just a few months back. “This is far bet­ter (than the NCAA). I’m play­ing for my coun­try, the coun­try of my birth.

“Noth­ing can top what I am feel­ing right now,” she added, just af­ter Saso had holed out and waited for the Chi­nese, Liu Wenbo, make a mess out of her 72nd hole with a quadru­ple bo­gey.

Gib­son broke down­while be­ing in­ter­viewed, while the girls held their com­po­sure and cel­e­brated with fam­ily and friends who made the trip here and shared their jour­ney to his­tory.

Source: Inquirer Golf