The Senior European Tour is heading south of the border for the first time.
The Senior European Tour is heading south of the border for the first time.
The 50-and-over circuit is spreading its wings, announcing on Wednesday a new tournament in Mexico in November.
Past Masters champion Ian Woosnam, U.S. Open champion Michael Campbell and former European Ryder Cup team members Constantino Rocca and Jean van de Velde have a new stop to compete against each other.
Punta Mita, in conjunction with VDV Internacional Golf Manejo, will host the inaugural WCM Mexico Senior Open, November 14-17. Taking place within the gates of the 1,500-acre luxury resort along Mexico’s Pacific coastline, the tournament will gather golf legends from across the globe to play at Pacifico Golf Course—a Jack Nicklaus signature design, which ranks sixth in Golfweek’s Best list for Mexico, Caribbean, Atlantic Islands and Central America. Pacifico is celebrating its 25th anniversary along with the destination in 2024. The course reopened in November 2021 after a six-month closure to restore the greens, bunkers and surrounds with TifEagle Bermuda grass.
Sanctioned by the Senior European Tour and the Mexican Federation of Golf, the WCM Legends Senior Mexico Senior Open is set to feature a stellar lineup of golf legends with six-time major championship winner Lee Trevino serving as an ambassador. Confirmed participants include Woosnam, Campbell, Rocca and Van de Velde, who has taken up permanent residence as resident instructor at Punta Mita. The full field will be formally introduced at a later date from an abundance of major champion golfers currently participating in the Legends Tour circuit as well as the Champions Tour. These players have previously made their mark in prestigious tournaments on the DP World Tour (formerly the European Tour), PGA Tour, Ryder Cup, and Presidents Cup.
The event is organized by VDV (Partners) Internacional Golf Manejo, under the leadership of Van de Velde. The sister company, VDV Partners, boasts a successful track record of managing professional golf tournaments, including the last three editions of the WCM Legends Open de France. During the three-day event at Punta Mita, professional golfers will vie for an impressive prize purse of $450,000.
A unique feature of the WCM Mexico Senior Open is the participation of 64 amateur golfers. Amateurs will compete as a team of two players alongside two Legends Tour professionals in a modified alliance format over a three-day period. The team with the most Stableford points will be crowned as the Mexico Senior Open Alliance champions.
Who can forget the way he squandered a three-stroke lead on the last hole of the 1999 British Open at Carnoustie?
I flew to Mexico for a golf lesson from a Frenchman.
That’s where Jean Van de Velde, the affable golfer who once nearly had both hands on the Claret Jug but let it slip away in dramatic fashion is living and working these days, heading up the Jean Van de Velde Golf Academy at Punta Minta, located on the southernmost point of the Riviera Nayarit, 30 miles northwest of the resort city of Puerto Vallarta.
Who can forget the way he squandered a three-stroke lead on the last hole of the 1999 British Open at Carnoustie and lost to Scotland’s Paul Lawrie in a three-man playoff?
Van de Velde kept his chin up and dealt with defeat with class and a smile on his face. In October, we met for a golf lesson and a talk about the game he loves. It could’ve continued for hours, especially if we started drinking a good bottle of his wine, but unfortunately he had pick up duty and had to run off to fetch his son. Suffice it to say, he’s still active in the game as an instructor, television broadcaster, tournament operator and wine merchant among other things. One of the more fascinating parts of our talk occurred when we talked about the golf swing as he tried to straighten out my penchant to hook it and more recent struggles with a block to the right — “That’s when you load too much on the left on the backswing,” he said.
Jean Van de Velde gives Golfweek senior writer Adam Schupak a lesson at his golf academy in Punta Mita in Mexico. (Adam Schupak/Golfweek)
“I’m a guy who looks at what the golf ball does to identify what system you’re in. Whether it is a draw or a fade, as long as you control that shot it’s OK. What matters is repetition,” he said. “Then you decide, OK, this is what you do, and maybe with a little effort this is where you can be. Do you want to embark on that journey or learn to control the system you’re already in? I’m not the guy who is going to try to transform you just for the sake of it just because I have one swing thought in my head. Do I have a few preferences? It’s like the salt and the pepper in a recipe. At the end of the day, you need to have the ingredients.”
During his playing career, Van de Velde worked with legends in the teaching world from John Jacobs to David Leadbetter to Butch Harmon.
“David tried to re-make a few things,” Van de Velde said. “We tried to work on my takeaway. I was bringing the club a little too inside, I was crossing the line, my body had completed the turn and my arms were still moving. It’s all fine as long as you have the right timing, but when things go wrong again, where do you start? How do you get back on track as fast as you can? He said, ‘This is what I think,’ but at the end of the day it was my decision. He didn’t burn me with an iron and you’re going to do it. I implemented a few changes so I could swing in a way that was going to be more reliable. I did believe and I still do that he and Butch and John Jacobs and a few others were a big influence on me and they were right in their analysis.”
He continued: “Technique and teaching, I’ve always been very interested and read a lot of things and been lucky to be around some great thinkers on the swing. I believe the swing is made up of little imperfections. If you look at me swinging, I always had my hands behind at address, but I always started with a forward press. Do you want to change that or look at what goes together and make it happen? In 1999, I had control of my system and I putted pretty well. That year you see what I did at the Open but the best golf I played was in 2000 — by a mile. I played 18-20 times in America and finished 60th on the money list. I played I think 10 times in Europe and was 20 or 30th. In my life, I tried not to reinvent things. I used what others had done and adapted to myself. I told Bernhard Langer that I was going to try to play both tours and he said, ‘Just be careful. I tried that and it was complicated.’ I knew playing in the U.S. was going to have an expiration date. My kids were already in school in Geneva. It was hard to say, you know what, I’m going to play in America. Who’s around me? Who do I rely on? It wasn’t easy. It’s different now. The guys start playing in college golf and they make their lives straight away in the U.S. They are already structured whether it is Viktor Hovland or Jon Rahm.”
Jean Van de Velde attempts to fix the ball flight of Golfweek senior writer Adam Schupak, saying, “It ain’t going left, Sunshine,” after he straightened him out. (Adam Schupak/Golfweek)
Van de Velde suggested I do a drill where I held the club with the face a few degrees open at address. In his disarming style, he said, “you’re on the range. It doesn’t matter. Let’s see what happens.”
I swung and the ball flew right at the flag where I was aiming.
“It ain’t going to go left, Sunshine,” he said. “Not possible.”
In that moment, Jean Van de Velde became my latest golf guru. Here’s more from Van de Velde on the Ryder Cup, what went wrong with budding French star Victor Dubuisson and the time he stuck Jose-Maria Olazabal with the tab for a dozen or so bottles of fine wine from the Augusta National wine cellar.
The food, the drinks, the scene … oh yeah, the golf stands out at Punta Mita’s two courses, too.
Tania Ritchie and her husband were sailing around the world when friends of the Canadian couple asked to make a detour to view property.
Between mountains and the endless Pacific on a crescent of pristine beach is Punta Mita, a former fishing village on a private peninsula at the southernmost point of the Riviera Nayarit, 30 miles northwest of the resort city of Puerto Vallarta. A funny thing happened on their way around the world: The Ritchies ended up being the property buyers, calling off the sailing trip and never looking back.
“We were thinking we’d settle in Paris, maybe,” she says. “We had no intention of buying in Mexico, but we just knew and here we are 13 years later.”
Tania shared her origin story to this palm-shaded oasis of warm breezes, oceanfront holes and guaranteed good times between bites at a post-round feast last December at the 10th annual Golf & Gourmet, where I competed and hobnobbed along with golf greats Lorena Ochoa, Craig Stadler and Jean Van de Velde. It is the gated community’s signature and most anticipated event of the year, a four-day extravaganza of dining, drinking, teeing off and tastings. It is a modern-day bacchanalia with celebrity chefs, mixologists and sommeliers flown in for a weekend of culinary excellence, and it’s a bucket-list trip worth taking for golfers and non-golfers. (If anyone needs a partner, I’m available.)
Punta Mita’s Bahia Course, 17th hole, in Mexico (Courtesy of Punta Mita Golf Club)
I went solo because it was too soon for my wife and I both to be away from our then-10-month-old daughter. I promised my better half – not to mention the better golfer in the family – that one day I’d make it up to her. Never did I expect I’d deliver on the promise less than a year later, but that I did in October. The first time we were both away from our daughter – who we left in good hands with two of my sisters-in-law – felt like a belated babymoon.
A little more than 20 years ago, this southwest point on the Riviera Nayarit was nothing more than an off-the-grid spot for hardcore surfers. No one could have imagined that two championship golf courses, multimillion-dollar villas and two luxurious resorts, the Four Seasons and St. Regis, would be carved out of 1,500 acres of jungle on Banderas Bay.
On my first trip here, it didn’t take me long to discover why the Ritchies and tourists that enjoy activities such as snorkeling, scuba diving, sailing and fishing tend to fall hard for the intoxicating beauty of Punta Mita, especially at the Four Seasons Resort, where guests are welcomed at its thatched-roof – what the locals call a palapas – and open-air lounge and descend to a sparkling infinity pool at its center. Prepare to be blown away by views that register an 11 for “Wow” factor.
My accommodations were modern and elegant, and I opened the sliding glass door to draw in breezes off the electric-blue sea. But this is a place where you want to spend as little time in your room as possible.
I could’ve taken up permanent residence in the infinity pool, where the bartenders wade into the water to deliver drinks and snacks. I kept seeing sunbathers sipping straws out of coconuts, so I finally asked a middle-aged American tourist the name of this fanciful concoction. “Coco Loco,” he said of the mixture of gin, vodka, tequila and lime. “It’s kind of like a Long Island Iced Tea, but with tequila. You’ve got to have one … but only one!”
The St. Regis is every bit the equal of the Four Seasons for living in the lap of luxury, including a personal butler at your beck and call and a champagne toast for guests every Friday at sunset to ring in the weekend. There are two more five-star resorts scheduled to be built as part of a next phase in the development.
But when I visited with my wife, we stayed in a gorgeous rental property at the Tau Residences, which included our own terrace pool and a view of Bahia’s 17th green that could even be seen from the shower in the master bath. In effect the decision is to stay at one of the resorts and enjoy its amenities or choose from the many rental properties and receive access to the five beach clubs that dot the property and be treated as if you are the member-owner. It’s a bit like choosing between filet mignon and lobster tail for dinner. As someone who has done them both – the equivalent of surf and turf – I promise you can’t go wrong either way.
The 2023 Golfweek’s Best ranking of tropical courses include plenty of water views.
Welcome to the Golfweek’s Best 2023 list of top golf courses in Mexico, the Caribbean, the Atlantic islands and Central America.
The hundreds of members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them based on our 10 criteria. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings on each course are averaged to produce a final, cumulative rating. Then each course is ranked against other courses in the region.
This list focuses on the golf courses themselves, not the resorts as a whole or other amenities. Each golf course included is listed with its average rating from 1 to 10, its location, architect(s) and the year it opened.
These courses top Golfweek’s Best rankings in Mexico, the Caribbean, the Atlantic Islands and Central America.
Welcome to the Golfweek’s Best 2022 list of top golf courses in Mexico, the Caribbean, the Atlantic islands and Central America.
The hundreds of members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them based on our 10 criteria. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings on each course are averaged to produce a final, cumulative rating. Then each course is ranked against other courses in the region.
This list focuses on the golf courses themselves, not the resorts as a whole or other amenities. Each golf course included is listed with its average rating from 1 to 10, its location, architect(s) and the year it opened.
