ON THE ASIAN TO UR
Jazz Breaks Into World’s Top-100 following
SMBC Singapore Open Victory
hailand’s Jazz Janewattananond has
been elevated into the higher echelons
of professional golf after winning the
US$1,000,000 SMBC Singapore Open.
The 23-year-old Jazz broke into the top-100
of the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR)
for the first time in his career. He moved 37
places from 111st to 74th after earning 24
OWGR points upon his win at the Sentosa
Golf Club. Jazz was up against a star-
studded field that included the best golfers
from the Asian Tour and the Japan Golf Tour
Organisation (JGTO), as well as global stars
Sergio Garcia, Paul Casey and Davis Love III.
The Thai hotshot was enjoying a rich vein
of form going into the Asian Tour season
opener, having secured a fifth-place finish
on the Asian Development Tour’s Boonchu
Ruangkit Championship the previous week.
He also posted top-fives at the Queen’s
Cup hosted by Jaidee Foundation in late
November and the BNI Indonesian Masters
in December.
Jazz lived up to his tag as a top contender
by lifting the coveted trophy. The key to his
success at the SMBC Singapore Open was
to adopt a more relaxed mindset in the final
round. “I wasn’t expecting to win. I was
only going for The Open ticket,” said Jazz,
now a three-time winner on the Asian Tour.
To add the icing on the cake, Jazz set a new
tournament record for winning total with a
score of 18-under-par 266, surpassing the
mark of 267 set by Adam Scott in 2010.
Jazz added: “Breaking into the world’s
top-100 is a great deal for me, and winning
the Singapore Open is a great achievement.
I am going home to celebrate with my family
tonight. My dad went for surgery recently,
and I want to see him now and share this
trophy with him.”
Top notch captains to lead the fi eld in the showdown at Maybank Championship
aybank has announced legends of
golf and Major title winners, Ernie
Els and Padraig Harrington, as
among the star attractions who will be at
the Maybank Championship at Saujana
Golf & Country Club from March 21-
24. Defending champion Shubhankar
Sharma and Malaysia’s top-ranked
Gavin Green will also be part of the
formidable ¿ eld that will have players
drawn from the world Tours, including
a contingent from the ASEAN region.
The 156-¿ eld make-up embraces an
all-new category for this tournament,
with 15 players from the top-150 of the
Of¿ cial World Golf Ranking, qualifying
solely on merit. They join another 60
players drawn from both the Asian
and European Tours. By retaining the
iconic ASEAN category, the Maybank
Championship has elevated its player
¿ eld and made it inclusive of world-
class players from all the federations. A
string of players from Australia, China, New
Zealand and South Korea - some of them with
an eye on making the President’s Cup team
later this year - will also add signi¿ cantly
to the international composition of the
tournament.
But it is the inclusion of Els and
Harrington that will capture the imagination
of the fans as they await the fourth edition
of the Maybank Championship. It is ¿ tting
too that included in the ¿ eld at the US$3
million event in Kuala Lumpur are players
of top quality - and this is something Datuk
Abdul Farid Alias, Group President and CEO
of Maybank, alluded to when he said the
Bank was more than delighted to host such
pedigree at an event whose tagline is
“Where the Best Meet.” “The inclusion
of the game’s most active global
player Ernie ‘Big Easy’ Els, as well as
three-time Major winner and recently
appointed European Ryder Cup captain,
Padraig Harrington, underscores our
objective to feature some of the best
players in the world at this premier golf
tournament.”
“Having our defending champion,
Shubhankar
Sharma,
Maybank’s
ASEAN ambassador Gavin Green,
Japan’s prince of golf Ryo Ishikawa and
‘Babyface Assassin’ Poom Saksansin in
the ¿ eld, also reaf¿ rms our objective of
providing a platform for Asian stars to
shine,” added Datuk Abdul Farid. With
a list of some of the world’s leading
golfers at Saujana, drawn from almost
30 nations, the Maybank Championship looks
set for another entertaining and enthralling
tournament. Unsurprisingly, it inspires a mix
of international and Asian golfers in a truly
world-class Malaysian championship.
GolfPlus
FEBRUARY
2019
23