The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
New location adds spice to WGC event
Move to Mexico City ‘a really good thing,’ Mickelson says.
MEXICO CITY — Golf in Mexico City is buzzing this week.
Hundreds of fans, many of them children, leaned against the ropes behind the 18th green as Rory McIlroy finished up a practice round at Chapultepec Golf Club. They screamed his name and shrieked when McIlroy walked their way to sign their programs, flags and hats. Until Wednesday, odds are they had only seen him on television.
Golf in Miami has gone silent this week.
For 55 years consecutive years, Doral was a staple of the Florida swing, even when it became a World Golf Championship in 2007. Donald Trump bought the resort in 2012 and promised to make it “one of the great places anywhere in the world for golf.” The PGA Tour signed a deal that would keep it at Doral through 2023, unless a new sponsor didn’t want to be there.
And that’s why it’s no longer there.
In the middle of his presidential campaign, Trump lost business to Mexico, of all places. It was more about finances than politics for the PGA Tour, which couldn’t find a sponsor that wanted to be at Trump Doral.
The Mexico Championship, which starts today with the strongest field of the year, is now sponsored by Grupo Salinas.
“I really like Doral. I like what Gil Hanse did with the course. I like going there,” Phil Mickelson said. “But as a World Golf Championship event, it’s not a bad thing to move it to a different part of the world outside the United States. To bring the best players in the world here to Mexico City I think is a really good thing. It’s going to be a fun event. It’s been a very wellrun event. The people have been terrific, so I think it’s a good thing in the long run.”
Mickelson is among four players at the Mexico Championship who played in the first edition of this tournament at Valderrama in 1999, the year the World Golf Championships began. This is the one WGC event that was designated to travel, and it once did — Spain for two years, Ireland in 2002 and 2004 and England in 2006. And then when Doral was lacking a title sponsor, it morphed into a WGC.
Lee Westwood was at Valderrama that year. He echoed the thoughts of McIlroy, Adam Scott and others who believe the “world” in WGC is there for a reason. And he never felt he was playing a WGC event in Miami, no matter how much Spanish he heard in the gallery.
“It felt like a PGA Tour event,” he said.
The Mexico Championship has a different feel in so many ways, starting with the thin air of a club at nearly 7,800 feet.
Dustin Johnson, who makes his debut as the No. 1 player in the world, has been crunching numbers on his TrackMan to get a sense of how far the ball is going. His brother and caddie, Austin Johnson, keeps the yardage of how far each club goes in the air. Listed next to the driver: 345 yards.
For all the interest in the top players, most of the talk is the location.
“I’ve been traveling the world for 20-plus years and never been to Mexico,” Henrik Stenson said. “Everyone seems to be very excited to have the event here.”
Tiger “possibility” for Masters?: Rory McIlroy says Tiger Woods was in a good place mentally when they had lunch last week and that the next few weeks would go a long way in determining whether the four-time Masters champion shows up at Augusta National to play.
“It’s a possibility, for sure,” McIlroy said Tuesday.
Woods withdrew from the second round of the Dubai Desert Classic on Feb. 3 with back spasms and withdrew from his next two tournaments. His agent said it was not being viewed as an extended break. Woods has not said anything about the Arnold Palmer Invitational in two weeks or the Masters on April 6-9.