Manoa Cup showered with tradition, surprises
By Ann Miller
Advertiser Staff Writer
In 93 years, the Manoa Cup has been touched by the fickle finger of fate almost as often as it has been graced by golf greatness.
Match play is quirky and O'ahu Country Club, where the 94th Manoa Cup tees off tomorrow, is just as offbeat despite its elegance.
OCC's lushness masks a penchant for mauka showers. Its hills create awkward stances and tortured hamstrings in a event where the finalists might walk 162 holes in six days. Its relative shortness invites breathtaking shots, and disaster.
The combination has made this tournament rich in tradition and memories, and made most champions realize how blessed they are.
"I believe in fate," said four-time winner Brandan Kop, the only player to defend a Manoa Cup title in 30 years. "If you win the tournament, you were meant to win. If you don't, you can't do anything about it. I take that attitude, then I don't get mad.
"I look at the tournaments I won and a lot of it was dog luck. I hit between trees and it got through. I was aiming there, but what's the chances?"
Originally, Manoa Cup golfers played a 36-hole qualifying round with their handicaps. The low 16 advanced to a 36-hole stroke play championship the following week. But since 1926, this tournament has been strictly match play and often fascinating.
The most memorable shot may have come in 1980. After snapping the shaft of his driver off the tee at No. 13, Al Souza holed his second shot from 220 yards out for double eagle. He also threw nine birdies at six-time champion Ken Miyaoka — and barely won, 2 and 1.
Neither player saw the rare double eagle. The par-5 13th goes up Nu'uanu Valley, into the wind, with a blind second shot to a treacherous green. But Miyaoka later got play-by-play from the "man at the hot dog stand" beside the green: "One bounce and in the hole."
"I played good, you know," Miyaoka said. "He played better. What nobody remembers is that he broke two drivers that day; snapped them because he was so pumped up and swung so hard."
Miyaoka won his last Manoa Cup in 1975, at age 47, beating 48-year-old Owen Douglass Jr. Miyaoka ended it by sinking a five-foot putt that bounced off Douglass' ball and into the hole.
"I aimed at his ball because that gave me two chances to make the putt," Miyaoka said then. "If I hit his ball my putt would drop in and if I pulled my putt it would have gone in the hole. The made the hole bigger for me."
At that time, the champion received a one-year membership at OCC, a practice that was discontinued because of amateur regulations. Miyaoka, who has won more Manoa Cups than anyone but nine-time winner Francis I'i Brown, is now an honorary OCC member.
Expect the unexpected
The course lends itself to stunning moments that sometimes lead to startling surges.
Wendell Tom once needed just a dozen strokes to play the seventh, eighth, ninth, 10th and 11th holes.
He saw the other side of golf's twilight zone when David Ishii, the 1977 champion, birdied the first six holes of the afternoon round in a semifinal. Tom was 2-down after 18 holes and 6-down after 24, despite two-putting for birdie twice.
Four-time champion Charles Makaiwa won the 1952 Cup with a chip-in eagle against Jack Chun on the 33rd hole. The day before, Makaiwa erased Billy Arakawa with eagle on the same hole, followed by three birdies.
The shot doesn't always have to go in to be great. In the last three years, spectacular scrambles have salvaged holes and championships for Shane Hoshino, Randy Shibuya and Ryan Koshi.
Last year, Koshi squeezed his second shot on the final hole through an opening in the trees less than two feet wide to hold off Kellen-Floyd Asao. A year earlier, Shibuya was stymied under the trees right of the ninth green. With a 5-iron, he punched the ball into the face of the bunker. It bounced out to six feet of the hole and he sank the par putt.
Kop was on the receiving end of Hoshino's miracle shot in 1999, and lost a final for the only time.
Kop had won three straight holes to go 1-up heading into the 26th (No. 8). Hoshino's second shot flew into the back bunker at the top of the hill. He had a bad stance hitting down to a slick green, a golfing nightmare. "The only way to get it close," said Kop, an OCC member, "is to miss it."
Hoshino basically did. "I 'fatted' it a little," he admitted. "The ball crept over the lip, landed in the rough and trickled down to two feet of the hole."
On the next hole, Hoshino rammed in a 30-foot birdie putt with three feet of break. Kop was going down and, in the back of his mind, he knew why.
"I had two holes-in-one at Manoa Cup," he recalled. "In 1999, I aced No. 4 in the semifinals against Tommy Kim. The next year I aced No. 9 against Joe Phengsavath and didn't win again.
"Now everybody tells me don't get a hole-in-one anymore because I'll never win. It's a Catch-22."
It's also the way Manoa Cup works. Always has.
SHORT PUTTS: Tomorrow's qualifying round includes 12-year-old Michelle Wie, the first woman to qualify for match play at last year's Manoa Cup, and 10-year-old Bradley Shigezawa. ... Play begins at 6:30 a.m. tomorrow. Tuesday's first round starts at 7 a.m., with second-round matches at 11. Third-round and quarterfinal matches Wednesday and Thursday start at 7 a.m. Friday's 36-hole semifinals begin at 7 a.m., as does Saturday's 36-hole final.
