JAKARTA, March 25 - A parade of past and present number ones are heading to this week’s Enjoy Jakarta Indonesia PGA Championship, the second stop on OneAsia’s exciting 2013 schedule.
All four previous winners of OneAsia’s Order of Merit -- Korea’s Kim Bi-o, Australians Andre Stolz and Scott Strange and China’s Liang Wenchong -- will join money list kings Thaworn Wiratchant, Juvic Pagunsan, Jeev Milkha Singh and Simon Dyson at the Arnold Palmer-designed Emeralda Golf Club from March 28-31.
With the Enjoy Jakarta Indonesia PGA Championship being joint sanctioned by the Japan Golf Tour Organisation for the first time, two former number ones from the Land of the Rising Sun -- the iconic Shingo Katayama and Korea’s Kim Kyung-tae -- will also compete in the U.S. $1 million tournament.
Further strengthening the field are several players with recent success in Indonesia under their belts, including the in-form duo of Michael Hendry of New Zealand and Australia’s Nick Cullen.
Kim Bi-o, who won the Caltex Maekyung Open and SK Telecom Open back-to-back last season, will be making his seasonal debut in the Enjoy Jakarta Indonesia PGA Championship after missing the Thailand Open two weeks ago.
The ultra-talented Kim is the youngest player ever to win a OneAsia event -- the then 20 year old lifting the 2011 Nanshan China Masters in a playoff -- and was also the youngest to win playing rights for the PGA Tour that year.
Former PGA Tour winner Stolz was victorious twice in 2011 -- including the Indonesia PGA Championship -- en-route to topping the Order of Merit and Strange, runner up to Prayad Marksaeng in the season-opening Thailand Open, lifted the title in the first ever OneAsia tournament in 2009, the Volvo China Open.
The trailblazing Liang Wenchong, third in the European Tour joint sanctioned Avantha Masters two weeks ago, is the only player to have topped the money lists on both OneAsia and the Asian Tour, in 2010 and 2007 respectively.
Thaworn was top dog in Asia for a second time last season matching Singh, who was Asian number one in 2006 and 2008. England’s Dyson topped the money list in 2000 with Pagunsan becoming the first Filipino winner in 2011.
Katayama has won the Japan Tour Order of Merit a remarkable five times in 2000, 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2008 while Kim became the first Korean to win the crown in 2010 after three victories.
Cullen, victorious in the 2012 Indonesia Open at Emeralda Golf Club, is riding a wave of confidence into the tournament after finishing third in the Thailand Open while Hendry has a score to settle with this week’s venue.
The 2010 Indonesia Open winner was disqualified from last year’s tournament in bizarre circumstances.
His caddie pulled the flag stick from the hole after Hendry played a chip shot on the ninth green and the ball found the cup. The breach would normally result in a two-shot penalty, but Hendry did not realise his error and signed for a three-over 75 before being disqualified.
In early March, Hendry edged Strange in a playoff to win the New Zealand PGA Championship, a result he is hoping to repeat in the Enjoy Jakarta Indonesia PGA Championship.
“I have played well over there before and conditions wise I can cope with the heat and grass types,” he said. “It is a matter of hitting good shots and I will have a chance of winning again ... and get my own back on Emeralda.”
“I believe in the winning feeling,” added-the-33 year old, who gave up a promising cricketing career to become a golf professional in 2005.
“It was great to retain the trophy in New Zealand. When you go into the week you are the one who owns it with the feeling ‘this is mine I am not going to give it to anybody else’.
“I have been playing so much good golf lately with 10 top-10s in the last 12 events. The win was due -- I will be honest I was getting frustrated that it had not happened earlier but I was absolutely rapt that I had a good week and managed to get a win.
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