Singapore: Eight members of the triumphant Asia-Pacific Golf Confederation (APGC) Bonallack Trophy team will line-up in next month’s Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship (AAC).
To be staged at The Royal Melbourne Golf Club from October 26-29, the 14th edition of the region’s premier men’s amateur event will reward its champion with starting places at the 2024 Masters Tournament, The 152nd Open Championship and The 129th Amateur Championship.
Among those vying for glory will be Australian Jack Buchanan, China’s Sampson Zheng Yunhe, Chinese Taipei’s Lin Chuan-tai, Japan’s Yuta Sugiura, Malaysian Malcolm Ting, New Zealanders Joshua Bai and Mako Thompson and Vietnam’s Nguyen Anh Minh.
They all played their part in the APGC’s historic 17-15 victory over their European Golf Association counterparts at La Manga in Spain in the first week of August in the 11th edition of the Bonallack Trophy.
It was only the fourth time that Asia-Pacific had emerged victorious in the Ryder Cup-style team match play event’s 25-year history and just the second occasion that they’d won on European soil.
The four players who were part of the APGC line-up in Spain who will be conspicuous by their absence at Royal Melbourne are 2022 AAC champion Harrison Crowe of Australia, Koreans Cho Woo-young and Jang Yu-bin and Japan’s Taichiro Ideriha. By the time of the AAC, all four are expected to have turned professional.
Five players currently in the top-50 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR) will spearhead the starting line-up – Sugiura (20th), China’s Ding Wenyi (22nd), New Zealand’s Kazuma Kobori (30th), Thai Ratchanon ‘TK’ Chantananuwat (34th) and Zheng (47th).
Others in the top-100 are Australian Jeffrey Guan (51st), Japan’s Masayuki Yamashita (53rd), Thai Phichaskn Maichon (59th), China’s Chang Xihuan (72nd) and Zhou Yanhan (78th) and Lin (91st).
Joining Guan and Buchanan in a 10-strong Australian contingent are Lukas Michel, Connor Fewkes, Quinnton Croker, Max Charles, Harry Bolton, Jye Pickin, Jasper Stubbs and Harry Takis.
The 120-man field also contains the three members of Japan’s winning Asia-Pacific Amateur Team Championship for the Nomura Cup last year – Suguira, Minato Oshima and Riura Matsui – and three of the four players who led Indonesia to victory in last month’s Southeast Asian Amateur Team Championship for the Putra Cup – Randy Bintang, Gabriel Hansel Hari and Rayhan Latief.
Also vying for honours will be Vietnam’s Le Khanh Hung, individual gold medallist at the 2023 Southeast Asian Games, and Stanford University student Alexander Yang, who became the first Hong Kong golfer to play in a men's professional Major when he qualified for this year’s US Open.
Invitations for the AAC are sent to the leading players from the APGC member organisations. Each country is automatically provided with one position, which is filled by its highest-ranked player from the WAGR.
If an APGC member organisation has more than one player in WAGR, that member organisation is provided with an additional position, to be filled by the next ranked player. If an APGC member organisation does not have any players ranked in WAGR, it can nominate one player.
The remainder of the field is filled by taking the next highest ranked players from the WAGR with the maximum number of players allowed from a country being seven. The only exception is for the host country, which is allowed to have an additional three players.
For the 2023 AAC, invitations have been extended to players from 40 countries – Afghanistan, Australia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, China, Chinese Taipei, Cook Islands, Fiji, Guam, Hong Kong China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Jordan, Korea, Laos, Lebanon, Macau, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, New Zealand, Oman, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Qatar, Samoa, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Thailand, United Arab Emirates and Vietnam.
The AAC was created in February 2009 as a joint initiative to grow the game by the Masters Tournament, The R&A and the APGC.
*Full list of invited players can be viewed at https://www.aacgolf.com/the-championship/players
