Mark:
Percy Clifford certainly was the father of golf in Mexico, designing around forty courses over a three decade period. It’s said that he had set out roughly half the golf courses in the country by the time he finished in the late 1970s. I’d be interested to know how many of those forty layouts are still in use amongst the one hundred and twenty or so clubs that are affiliated today to the Federacion Mexicana de Golf.
Incidentally, I had one of the funniest experiences ever on a golf course when I visited Mexico during the 1986 (soccer) World Cup. Towards the latter stages of the tournament, as four of us football fans killed time before the final match between Argentina and West Germany, we fronted up at the local course near our base in Cuernavaca, an hour’s drive south of the capital.
At that time, none of us were “proper” golfers with official handicaps but the locals quickly sorted us out with clubs and caddies and set us on our way. After an enjoyable front nine, we stopped for a beer or three at the clubhouse, ordering the same for the loopers who had slinked off round the corner.
A little while later, suitably refreshed, our fourball headed for the 10th tee to resume our game. When we arrived at the tee box, we found it was situated right beside the caddie shack, where a sizeable group of unemployed caddies had gathered to watch their mates with the four golfing gringos begin their back nine.
First to tee up was my late father, an avid sports fan but a man who rarely ever played golf. After whiffing his first couple of tee shots, which raised a few sniggers from the onlookers, he elected to remove his glasses in order to “better see the ball” he was trying to hit. When he then smacked it down the fairway at the third attempt, all the caddies let out a big cheer as the ball sailed away.
But my father, due to the extra effort taken in hitting his shot, somehow staggered a couple of steps backwards in some sort of crazy recoil action and stepped right onto his glasses, rendering them a useless mush of metal and broken lenses – when he picked the glasses up to examine them, the whole place then just erupted with laughter, as if some sort of Mr Bean sketch had just been performed by one of the visiting ensemble and my poor dad, after bowing to the gallery, had to complete his round playing every shot semi blind!