Jason Kaneshiro: Peter Jung feels Manoa Cup win will help drive his pro aspirations

Sometimes golf works in mysterious ways.

Each summer, the Hawaii State Golf Association honors a past Manoa Cup champion during tournament week and this year chose to highlight the 35th anniversary of Curtis Kono’s 39-hole victory.

Kono would remain connected with Oahu Country Club as its longtime golf course superintendent, maintaining the pristine fairways and greens tucked against the Nuuanu Valley hillside before his recent retirement.

So it was fitting — perhaps even spooky — that Saturday’s state amateur match-play championship final would be the first to go past the scheduled 36 holes since Kono outlasted Brendan Moynahan in 1987.

The duel between Peter Jung and Kolbe Irei came up one hole shy of Kono-Moynahan showdown, taking its place as the second longest championship match in the history of the 113-year-old event.

Jung saw a 4-up lead after 18 holes erased by Irei’s incendiary putting in the afternoon round while opportunities to reclaim the lead on the 17th and 18th greens slid past the cup.

The Maryknoll alum and Washington State sophomore reset his focus and played two flawless playoff holes. Both players stuck their approach shots inside of 10 feet on No. 1 to set up birdies and Jung closed the match with a 9-foot birdie putt on the par-5 second hole after a wayward drive left Irei in scramble mode.

After the match, Jung and Irei came away drained by their 38-hole odyssey but appreciative for the 8-plus hours they shared matching high-pressure shots in a championship setting.

“The way Kolbe played, hat’s off to him,” Jung said, taking a seat after walking OCC’s undulating layout for the seventh time in six days.

“When I play I never want anything handed to me. I want to battle, because that’s how we both improve. I think learning from the matches is huge.”

With the win, Jung became the 12th player to capture consecutive Manoa Cup championships and just the third since Ken Miyaoka’s titles in 1971 and ’72. Brandan Kop, a four-time winner who again qualified for match play last week 39 years after claiming his first Manoa Cup, paired championships in 1997 and ’98. David Fink (2010-11) held the distinction as the last back-to-back winner prior to Jung’s victory on Saturday.

Like many of the champions before him, Jung has aspirations of playing professional golf down the road and winning a Manoa Cup can provide a path toward teeing off with the pros.

The winner is granted a spot in the HSGA’s qualifier for a spot in the Sony Open in Hawaii reserved for a Hawaii amateur and Jung won the 18-hole tournament in 2019 and again last November.

His 72 in the opening round at Waialae Country Club in January marked a significant improvement over his Sony debut a 16-year-old. He followed with a 65 on Friday, the second lowest score for a Hawaii player in the event’s history, and finished two shots off the cut line.

“The biggest thing about that was it just gave me motivation and it gave me a reason to practice and a reason to give it a shot knowing I can do that,” Jung said. “The fact that I’m able to see that and have the experience of playing with the best players in the world was pretty sick.”

Jung went on to post a 72.92 scoring average in eight tournaments in his freshman season at WSU and returned home for the summer with added strength packed on over a year in a college conditioning program — which no doubt helped him power through the Manoa Cup bracket.

Jung will head back to Washington in late July to play in another match-play event before starting his sophomore year in Pullman.

Hoisting the oldest trophy in Hawaii golf and taking the celebratory dive into the OCC pool were certainly part of the payoff for a weeklong grind. For Jung, the victory also represents part of the process.

“This event and all these tournaments in Hawaii are all prep for when we turn pro,” he said. “It’s whatever helps us prepare for that pro circuit.”