Mexico proves importance of location
MEXICO CITY — Some of the loudest cheers from the Mexico Championship came before the golf event even started.
The shrieks began when British Open champion Henrik Stenson finished his practice round on the 18th green and hundreds of fans, most of them children, called out his name in a way he likely never had heard it pronounced. Next up was Jordan Spieth and Phil Mickelson, followed by Rory McIlroy, who all stopped to sign autographs for them.
Seeing them on television doesn’t make them real. Seeing them in person does.
Moments like this is why the week at Chapultepec Golf Club was such a success, and it sure;y didn’t hurt that Dustin Johnson was at his world-class best by overcoming a frustrating week on the greens to win his fourth World Golf Championships title.
The World Golf Championships were launched in 1999 not only to bring together the best players from six tours around the world but to showcase these players to different parts of the world. They had gotten away from that.
In a roundabout way, that might have been one of Donald Trump’s most underrated contributions to golf. Because he brought so much attention to himself at Trump Doral — this was the case even before he successfully ran for president — the PGA Tour had trouble finding a corporate sponsor that wanted to pay about $15 million a year and share the stage with the owner of the golf course.
Grupo Salinas and Mexico stepped in with plans that go beyond staging a golf tournament.
“We needed to get these heroes in Mexico, and get the kids to feel it and live it,” said Benjamin Salinas, chief executive of TV Azteca and the son of Grupo Salinas founder Ricardo Salinas. “Kids are our main objective here. If the kids start really liking these guys and wanting to emulate them … this is why we had a Mexican player (Roberto Diaz), so these guys can look at him and said, ‘I can be that guy.’
“Signing caps and balls, they’re going to treasure it forever,” he said. “This is not a thing you’re going to see on eBay.”
The last time this WGC had been played outside the United State was in 2006 at The Grove in a London suburb. One afternoon, a young British lad pressed up against the ropes by the putting green. Stewart Cink came over to sign his program, and the boy looked up at him with wide eyes. Cink was three years away from winning the British Open, but he had played on three Ryder Cup teams. And he was close enough for the boy to touch him.