Gary Murphy
OneAsia, the fastest-growing golf circuit in the world, will launch its lucrative 13-stop schedule for 2011 with this week's star-laden Indonesia PGA Championship, worth US$180,000 to the winner.
Formed in 2009 with just five events, OneAsia doubled in size to 10 tournaments last year and will stage at least three more in 2011, each with minimum prize money of US$1 million.
China’s Liang Wenchong, who has won a record three events on OneAsia and topped the 2010 Order of Merit with US$560,736 in earnings, will start as favourite at Imperial Klub Golf from March 24-27.
Liang heads one of the strongest fields assembled for a standalone OneAsia event outside of Australia with 2009 Order of Merit champion Scott Strange and a quartet of winners from last year leading the challengers.
Australia’s Strange, a two-time winner on the European Tour including the OneAsia joint-sanctioned Volvo China Open in 2009, is joined by countryman Kim Felton, New Zealander Michael Hendry and the highly rated Korean duo of Bae Sang-moon and Kim Dae-hyun, who all tasted victory on OneAsia last season.
The big-hitting Kim, who emerged victorious at the GS Caltex Maekyung Open last year and was runner-up to Liang in the Order of Merit, has high hopes of making a winning start to the season.
"I am quite confident to win this competition," said Kim. "I have put in a lot of effort since December and hopefully I can play more consistently and skillfully this year.”
Eight out of the top 10 players from last year’s Order of Merit will compete for the title with Australians Matthew Griffin (7), Andre Stolz (8) and Michael Wright (10) joining Liang, Kim, Hendry, Bae and Felton who finished first, second, third, fourth and sixth respectively.
Amongst the other notables in the line-up are Major champion Wayne Grady of Australia, winner of the 1990 US PGA Championship, and teen prodigy Han Chang-won of Korea, the 2009 Asian Amateur champion who will make his eagerly awaited professional tournament debut.
Imperial Klub Golf, the tournament venue, is one of Jakarta’s premier golf courses and boasts a championship course designed by British architect Desmond Muirhead.
The Indonesia PGA Championship will be showcased on OneAsia's television platform with live coverage for four hours a day across all four tournament days, and broadcast to over 400 million homes in more than 40 countries.
Gary Murphy of Ireland qualified for the 2011 OneAsia Tour in January, after losing out on his European Tour card last season, and returns to Asia where he was successful before making it through the European Qualifying School in 1999.
