144 players from 26 nations, including leading Asian Tour stars, compete at Wack Wack Golf & Country Club in Manila.
THE Philippine Golf Championship presented by the Philippine Sports Commission gets underway from 5 to 8 February at Wack Wack Golf & Country Club, with 144 players from 26 nations set to compete.
Organised under the National Sports Tourism-Inter Agency Committee and the National Golf Association of the Philippines, the event is sanctioned by the Asian Tour.
The tournament, a stroke play format over four rounds of 18 holes with a cut after 36 holes to the leading 65 pros plus ties, carries a purse of US$500,000.
The course is a par-72 measuring 7,188 yards.
Top contenders include Thailand’s Jazz Janewattananond, Rattanon Wannasrichan and Suteepat Prateeptienchai, Chinese Taipei’s Wang Wei-hsuan and Lee Chieh-po, Japan’s Jinichiro Kozuma, and Hong Kong’s Taichi Kho.
Last year’s Asian Development Tour Order of Merit top-10 players, led by Merit list champion Tawit Polthai, are also in the field.
Janewattananond finished the 2025 season with two consecutive top-six results in Saudi Arabia and India, and four top-10s in his last eight events.
Rattanon placed fourth on the Order of Merit last year after victories at the Mercuries Taiwan Masters, the 2024 SJM Macao Open, and the 2017 Thailand Open.
Fellow Thai Suteepat is the highest-ranked player in the field at 267 in the Official World Golf Ranking, having won the Mandiri Indonesia Open in 2025 and three other top-10s.
Wang Wei-hsuan recorded three top-three finishes between September and October 2025, including a play-off loss at the SJM Macao Open, finishing ninth on the Order of Merit.
Lee Chieh-po and Jinichiro Kozuma both competed on the LIV Golf circuit last year, with Kozuma having three wins on the Japan Golf Tour.
The event marks the second consecutive season the Asian Tour has begun in the Philippines.
Wack Wack has previously hosted the Asian Tour for the Philippine Open in 2014, when Marcus Both of Australia claimed victory, and has a history of hosting major tournaments including the 1977 World Cup of Golf.
Among the 42 Filipino players in the field, Justin De Los Santos is the highest-ranked on the OWGR, while Justin Quiban was the highest-ranked Filipino on the 2025 Asian Tour Order of Merit.
Nine amateurs are also competing.
Thirty of the 35 players who earned their cards at Qualifying School in December are in the field, including Lin Yuxin of China and Shaurya Bhattacharya of India.
Seventeen-year-old Korean Minchan Kim makes his professional debut this week after qualifying at 16 and winning the All Thailand Golf Tour Qualifying School.
BingoPlus is an official sponsor of the event, building on its golf sponsorship portfolio following last year’s International Series Philippines.
 The Sun Malaysia
