Requiem for a friend

I grew up with Miguel de la Riva Preysler. We were classmates from grade school to college at La Salle and graduated with the same Liberal Arts and Commerce degrees. He wasn’t just a good friend, he was an inspiration as a handsome, kind-hearted, gifted athlete. Mike made all his classmates proud. He was our star sportsman and excelled in several sports, including golf, softball, football, handball, sailing, pelota, squash, clay-pigeon shooting, bowling and track. 

Of all the sports that he played, it was golf where Mike stood out the most. He was a member of the Philippine golf team that won five straight Southeast Asian championships from 1969 to 1975. Then, when he relocated to Sotogrande in Spain in 1977, Mike became a legend in the European amateur golf circuit. He won five mid-amateur Spanish, four senior Spanish and three senior Spanish international championships. To top it all, Mike bagged the senior European title in Portugal in 2006, beating runner-up Italy’s Francesco Ghraardi by three strokes.

In 2015, Mike claimed the Spanish senior crowns in doubles and individual play. It was a remarkable feat, considering that in 2009, his left knee had given way due to a dislocated joint and the injury caused his game to plummet. He underwent over four months of rehab and struggled with his swing on his return to the greens. But slowly, surely, Mike got back his form and six years later, was back on top.

When I found out that Mike was diagnosed with Stage 4 renal cancer last August, I couldn’t believe it at first. Early this year, he was in Manila for a visit and made time to catch up with buddies playing golf at the Manila Golf and Country Club. His close friend Jay del Prado, another classmate who now lives in New Jersey, went to Sotogrande to cheer him up. Jay said Mike had lost a lot of weight but was in good spirits and at peace, leaving his fate to the Lord.

Last September, Mike sent a text on his condition. He had just started a new treatment with pills, a type of chemotherapy directed at the renal tumor. “I feel we are on the right track and making progress,” Mike said. Sadly, two weeks ago, Mike passed away at the Quiron Hospital in Marbella, Spain. He was 67. Mike is survived by his wife of over 40 years, Amparo Veloso. Mike Crame, another La Salle classmate, said, “Mike will always be remembered for being a gentleman and his outstanding achievements in golf.”

Felipe Oriol, president of the Real Club de Golf Sotogrande, described Mike as “one of the best amateurs in Spain, a very dear person and a fundamental member of the Board” of which he was a member for 24 years. A dual Filipino-Spanish citizen, Mike is in the history books as the only golfer to represent the Philippines and Spain in international competition.

One thing I cherish about Mike was his sense of humor. I remember Mike relating an unforgettable incident in his golf career at the British Open in 2001. “It was a top-caliber tournament and I was only one of three amateurs who qualified for the second round,” said Mike who was inducted into the La Salle Sports Hall of Fame in 2007. “I’ll never forget when it was my turn to swing, I noticed the crowd behind me started to get bigger and bigger and come closer and closer. I told myself either I’m playing extremely well to bring the fans in or I’ve got a hole in my pants. I looked around and found out why the crowd was surrounding me. It wasn’t for me. It was for Jack Nicklaus. I ended up missing the cut for the third round by one stroke.”

 Mike started playing golf when he was 10, taught by his father Fausto. “His father, who had given up golf about 10 years earlier, started giving him 15 to 20-minute lessons after work, swinging the club without a ball, teaching him how to hold the club, the correct posture and swing,” wrote the editors of Andalucia Golf Magazine. “He bought him plastic balls to hit in the garden. Miguel cut the grass around the hole and when the plastic ball reached the green, he changed it for a hard golf ball and putted. He built a par-4 around a tee with a dog-leg and set his own course records in the family garden.”

One other sport that Mike loved was sailing. He was the Far East Yacht Racing Federation champion and was named Yachtsman of the Year by the Philippine Sportswriters Association in 1966.

When Mike was selected to represent the Philippines in sailing at the 1968 Mexico Olympics and couldn’t go because the Philippine Amateur Athletic Federation had no funds to ship his boat, he decided to try his luck in another sport. Sailing’s loss turned out to be golf’s gain. “I was really annoyed,” he said. “I gave up sailing and got serious with golf.” He had trained seven months for the Olympics after winning a Finn Olympic-class competition (one-man yacht) which included sailors from southern Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

There will never be another Miguel Preysler in Philippine sports. He was one of a kind and will be missed by family, friends and fans alike. Farewell to a dear classmate and sports icon.