Symetra Tour campaigners Dottie Ardina and Mia Piccio hope to step up as they try to foil the foreign bets’ sweep bid of the two-leg ICTSI Champion Tour presented by Champion and Taiwan LPGA Tour at the Manila Southwoods starting tomorrow (Wednesday, March 16) at the Legends course in Carmona, Cavite.

With LPGA Tour mainstay Cyna Rodriguez and amateur ace Princess Superal skipping this week’s $75,000 championship to honor previous commitments to compete abroad, Ardina and Piccio will carry the cudgels for the embattled local side which took a beating in last week’s ICTSI Champion Tour at Splendido.

Korean Lee Jeong-hwa nipped Japanese Fumika Kawagishi by one to top the kickoff leg of this year’s ICTSI Ladies Philippine Golf Tour and the fifth stage of the Taiwan LPGA with the duo again tipped to slug it out for this week’s title and the top $15,000 purse owing to their form and momentum.

Lee and Kawagishi turned the Splendido leg into a two-player affair with Superal emerging the top local finisher at joint third with Thai Kanphanitnan Muangkhumaskul and Taiwanese Chen Yu-ju although the troika finished six strokes behind the Korean ace.

Piccio wound up joint ninth while Ardina, winner of three LPGT events, ended up solo 11th with both players raring to make up for those so-so finishes with a pair of strong performances this week along with former LPGT winners Jayvie Agojo and Sarah Ababa and former SEA Games gold medalist Chihiro Ikeda.

But the foreign cast remains as tough as ever with 38 other mainstays of Taiwan LPGA re-joining the event, all aiming to get a crack for top honors in the 54-hole championship sponsored by International Container Terminal Services, Inc.

They include Korean Hwang Ye-nah, winner of last year’s ICTSI Ladies Open at Southlinks but who struggled and hobbled to finish joint 16th last week, Yu Pei-lin and Chen Min-jou of Taiwan, Kang Ji-won of Korea, Japanese Senno Yasufuku, Yumi Takabayachi and Tomoko Takahashi and Thais Pornpak Paksakul, Chatpara Siriprakob and Saranporn Langkulgasettrin.

Rodriguez, who failed to live up to the hype and ended up tied with Hwang, resumes her LPGA Tour campaign in Arizona while Superal, the former US Girls Junior champion and winner of two LPGT tournaments, is in Portugal as member of the Asian team going up against Europe in a Ryder Cup format among the amateur players.

Meanwhile, the top bets test the bunker-laden layout in today’s (Tuesday) pro-am tournament where they will be paired with officials and guests of the organizing Pilipinas Golf Tournaments, Inc. and event’s chief backers adidas, Custom Clubmakers, KZG, TaylorMade, Champion, Summit Natural Drinking Water, Pacsports, Sharp and Rustan’s Supermarket.