Bambang, Joko win berths for Italian tour

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Bambang Sulistyo and Joko Riadi won the Audi quattro Cup amateur golf tournament at the Rancamaya Golf Course in Bogor, West Java, on Sunday to book their places at the world finals in Sardinia, Italy, in October.

The one-day tournament, which used the stableford scoring system, featured as many as 150 amateur golfers divided into flight A and flight B.

Flight A saw golfers with handicaps up to 14 while flight B grouped those with handicaps between 15 to 28.

Bambang scored 42 points to win the flight A category. He beat close rivals Winarso Tanu Pranoto and Firman Soma Chandra, who finished with 41 and 39 points respectively.

Joko, who admitted to taking golf seriously only in the last two years, scored 44 points in flight B, followed by Hamdi Adnan with 42 points and Ratiyan Abdurrahman with 41 points.

The winners, who will be up against participants from 28 countries during the championships in Italy, were elated after their achievements.

"I had not expected I would win. I just played as well as possible. I'm glad that I did it well," Joko, a production manager of the Jakarta-based fish-exporting company Bonecom, told reporters.

Bambang, 49, said consistency was the key to his win. "Playing under the stableford system, we can't afford to lose our consistency. I just held my nerve to avoid making blunders," said the vice-president of Panamas Jaya, a subsidiary of cigarette maker Sampoerna.