Off the net:
Smack dab in the middle of it sits something of an oasis. Tijuana Country Club, or Club Campestre de Tijuana, is a semi-private club and the only game in town. And how about this: The course architect is none other than Alister MacKenzie. That's right, the same guy who cranked out Cypress Point and Augusta, though comparisons to those world-class tracks are not encouraged.
Originally laid out in 1927, Tijuana Country Club got a facelift in 1947 but more or less exists today as MacKenzie first intended. It is a traditional, country-club-style, tree-lined layout, a nice mix of longer and shorter holes, with the front nine offering straightforward shots with parallel fairways and the back nine featuring some more interesting doglegs and generally narrower fairways.
Ernesto Perez Acosta, the club's director of golf, says the vast majority of Tijuana C.C.'s members are, not surprisingly, residents of Tijuana, though a handful come from San Diego. The club offers caddies in addition to electric and hand carts and hosts youth clinics for the Mexican golfers of tomorrow. He adds the back nine is undergoing some upgrades and a recent visit confirmed progress in several areas, particularly the bunkers, is well underway.
"We're reworking the bunkers all throughout the back nine," said Acosta. "We want to bring them back to that MacKenzie style of bunkering."
Can this be for real? I knew he went to South America but is it possible he popped down to Mexico on one of his trips through San Diego? Anyone with any info, I'd love to hear about it, as would Sean Tully and Mark Bourgeois who I am collaborating with on an updated list of Mackenzie's courses (with Nick Leefe of the Alister Mackenzie Society UK).
cheers Neil