Teens, women liven up the Cup

Oahu Country Club’s weird and wonderful challenges, the quirks of match play and a fearless posse of 13-year-olds dominated the opening round of Manoa Cup on Tuesday.

Someone will become the 104th Manoa Cup champion Saturday. After two days, no one can hazard a guess who that might be, but all three former champions remain and so do both women.

Kauai’s Jonathan Ota won the 2006 Cup at 44, making him the oldest champion in the past 20 years. He won big on Tuesday and was hitting balls before anyone else was off the course.

Today, Ota plays Shawn Lu, one of three 13-year-olds remaining, with Kyosuke Hara and Andrew Chin.

Tim McClaren, 50, and Matt Ma, 28, needed overtime to oust Kyle Suppa (13) and Evan Kawai (12). Suppa won the last two holes of regulation to extend his match before falling.

Kawai was 2 up on Ma with three to go. On the first extra hole, both drove in the trees. Kawai had to punch out right, but Ma shut the face on his 8-iron and threaded a career approach to the green to win with par.

"He’s got some kick to him, he’s got a bite," Ma said of Kawai. "He was pummeling me all day."

Todd Rego needed 20 holes to stop Colby Takushi in the longest match. Richard Hattori continued his torrid play with an 8-and-6 victory that was the day’s most dominant.

David Fink, going for the first three-peat in 80 years, and four-time Cup champion Brandan Kop needed a lot longer.

Fink finally shook Dennis Harrison in the last two holes to win 3 and 1. Harrison chipped to kick-in range in a Monday playoff to get into match play and was seeded 64th.

"I didn’t have my best day, nor did he," said Fink, a junior at Oregon State. "It comes back to grinding. That’s what this is all about — who can grind the longest."

After four holes Kop, 51, was 3 down to 18-year-old Justin Chu. The Hawaii Golf Hall of Famer tied it before they made the turn, birdied their 13th hole (No. 4) to take his first lead and somehow survived the rest of the way to win 2 up, despite strong sand play by Chu.

Chu hit four bunker shots on the back nine. One went in and the other three stopped within 2 feet.

Marissa Chow and Alina Ching, who will be Pepperdine teammates in the fall, both held off 50-something men to reach the second round.

Ching will play Fink in today’s first match at 7 a.m. The Pepperdine sophomore got up and down on Nos. 15, 16 and 17, then poured in a 4-footer on the 18th to outlast Paul Loui, 1 up.

Ching took her first lead on the 12th hole, in a match where the greatest gap was 1 up and she and Loui hardly missed a fairway. She traced her par on the 12th — one of the quirkiest of OCC’s many quirky holes — back to being an OCC member most of her life.

"We were both over the green," said Ching, who reached the third round here two years ago. "I chipped and landed it short of the green and rolled up maybe 5 yards. He was putting and it looked like it was going into the hole. Then it looked like it was going to be maybe 8 inches past the hole, but it kept rolling pretty far down there. That’s when I was happy I play here a lot and I knew if it went past the hole it would be gone."

Loui was Kop’s Kalani classmate and Little League teammate. He has lived in Sacramento the past 30 years and comes home every year to play the Manoa Cup, happy to add to its legend and comfortable with losing a close match to one of its new breed.

"Alina is a fantastic player. I actually played with Marissa yesterday and both girls are fabulous players," said Loui, a software developer. "I’ve played in this tournament probably a dozen times and the girls now … the level of play is a notch above back even when Michelle Wie was young. They have enough game to go very far."

Loui talked California friends Mason and Alan Wong into playing this year. Mason Wong, four months older than Kop, is the oldest player left in the field. Tom Goodbody, who just turned 70, lost to Michael Fan in the opening round.

Today Fan plays Chow. She lost two of the first three holes, then got in a zone to win, 4 and 3, against Carl Ho, nearly 40 years her senior. That type of diversity has become such a Manoa Cup staple that golfers rarely seem to notice anymore. Besides, Chow says, OCC’s unique layout is a great equalizer.

"They are players and he can obviously play," Chow said of Ho. "Your age doesn’t matter."