The Singapore Masters, originally scheduled to be played at the Laguna National Golf and Country Club from February 14-17, has quietly been scratched off the schedules of both Tours, it was reported by the Evening Echo on Thursday.

No reason could be ascertained for the removal of the event from the two Tours, but a lack of sponsorship is believed to be behind it.

An always popular event at the always popular Laguna National, it drew some big international names, but also produced some surprise Asian winners during its halcyon years as the top event in Singapore, but since Caltex discontinued its sponsorship, it has struggled in recent years and this year would have been heavily overshadowed by the recently revived Barclays Singapore Open which has been positioned as the new flagship event of the Asian Tour.

The difficulty of finding reliable, new, long-term sponsors could not been helped, either, by the fact that the new HSBC Women's Champions tournament will also be played in Singapore this year, in its case at the nearby Tanah Merah Country Club.

The position left vacant on the two tours' schedules has been filled by another co-sanctioned event, the Enjoy Jakarta Astro Indonesian Open at the Cengkareng Golf Club in Jakarta, which had originally been set down to tee off on February 21.

Tournament organisers GlobalOne were reported to unavailable for comment on Thursday, but the Asian Tour's executive chairman, Kyi Hla Han, expressed hope that the event will be brought back in the not too distant future

"It is a great disappointment that the Singapore Masters will not be on the Asian schedule for this season," he told The Echo.

"It is an event that has produced a lot of Asian winners in the past; winners like Mardan Mamat, Liang Wen-chong and Zhang Lian-wei.

"We look forward to its return - especially at a course like Laguna National which has been very supportive of our events in the past."

January 11, 2008