By REY C. LACHICA
The Philippine women’s golf team will not have to contend with Fil-Japanese star in the 2026 Asian Games Aichi-Nagoya next month.
The 25-year-old Saso, who won two gold medals – singles and team events – for the Philippines at the Jakarta Asian Games in 2018, is not part of the Japanese team in the continental showpiece slated at the Kasugai Country Club East Course from Sept. 30 to Oct. 3.
It sounds like music to the ears for many golfing Filipino fans, but the PH women’s team, led by Olympic Bianca Pagdanganan, has plenty of dangerous rivals – not only the Japanese.
Other members of the PH women’s team that will go up against an army of prolific golfers in the region are former US Amateur Open champion Rianne Malixi and Pauline Del Rosario.
In hopes of nurturing its young talent, Japan has assembled an all-amateur but powerful cast in Aira Nagasawa, Ai Goto and Mamika Shinchi.
After Saso’s stellar showing at the Jakarta Games, she became an instant global star for winning her first US Women’s Open five years ago at the young age of 19
Though she was born in Bulacan to a Filipina mother, Saso shifted to Japanese nationality in late 2021. She clinched her second US Women’s Open in 2024.
She also boasts of two LPGA Tour of Japan titles.
Comprising the PH men’s golf team are Miguel Tabuena and Justin Michael Delos Santos.
Both Tabuena and Delos Santos face a tough task in ending the country’s 40-year gold-medal drought, with now-coach Ramon Brobio emerging the surprise champion during the Seoul Games.
Tabuena won a silver in the Guangzhou Games in 2010 – 12 years after Gerard Rosales took a bronze in Bangkok.
