First staged in 2015, the Latin America Amateur Championship has always been about growing golf in that region. One way to accomplish that goal, the thinking went, was to create heroes who might inspire individuals to take up the game while inducing competitive players to elevate their ambitions and deepen their commitments to reaching golf’s highest pinnacles.
Nine years later, it is safe to say that the tournament, which is being contested this week at the Santa Maria Golf Club in Panama City, is fulfilling its goals. Improvements in the overall quality of play in this event speaks to that. So does the growth and increasing effectiveness of amateur golf programs throughout Latin America.
Then, there are the successes of LAAC alumni in both the professional and amateur realms, many of whom have become actual heroes to players in that part of the world.
Most notable is Joaquín Niemann of Chile, the 2018 champion who went on to win twice on the PGA Tour and play for the International team in the 2019 Presidents Cup before being recruited to join LIV Golf.
Other standouts include Fred Biondi of Brazil, who shortly after playing in his fifth Latin America Am in 2023 took the individual NCAA Championship title and helped the University of Florida win the team competition. Colombia’s Nico Echavarría, who teed it up in three LAACs, prevailed in the 2023 Puerto Rico Open.
The latest lad to break through is Mexican national Raúl Pereda, who was one of five golfers to emerge from the pressure cooker that is Q-School with his PGA Tour card for 2024. And the slender, 27-year-old did so in dramatic fashion, posting three birdies on the back nine of the final round of the 72-hole qualifier, with two of those being chip-ins.
“I had been dreaming about putting Mexico back on the PGA Tour,” said Pereda, who is the only Mexican on tour after Abraham Ancer and Carlos Ortiz bolted for LIV. “Now, I have done that. And the way I battled throughout that last round showed me that I am capable of playing with the best players in the world.”
Luis Alvarez, who oversees sales and player development in Latin America for the Acushnet Company, the parent of Titleist and FootJoy, agrees with Pereda’s self-assessment.
“Raúl has the game to play on that level as well as the heart,” he said. “He faced a lot of adversity that final round, and he held on.”
The youngest of six children, Pereda proved to be very capable at golf as a boy. Born in Córdoba, a city of roughly 200,000 residents in the state of Veracruz known for producing coffee and sugarcane, he said he was 3 years old when his parents first put a golf club in his hands.
“My mother and father belonged to the Country Club of Córdoba, which has tennis courts and a nine-hole layout that is the only course in town,” Pereda said. “They were good golfers with single-digit handicaps, and I started playing a lot. By the time I was 5 years old, I was competing in tournaments.”
“My best friend back then played at the club as well,” he said. “He was always beating me, and by doing so, he was pushing me to get better. He made me work harder on my game, and when I was 14, I made my first junior national team appearance.”
Some three years later, when Pereda was getting ready to enroll at Jacksonville University in Florida, he won a professional golf tournament in Mexico.
“I was 17 years old and the first amateur ever to win a professional tournament there,” Pereda said. “I told my mother that I wanted to forget about school and turn pro myself. But she said there was no way I was not going to college.”
So, off to Jacksonville he went. There, Pereda became a stalwart on the Dolphins golf team and majored in international business, graduating in 2018. It was during that time at Jacksonville, which counts PGA Tour golfers Donnie Hammond and Russell Knox as alumni, that Pereda competed in his three Latin America Amateurs, which rewards the winner with spots in the Masters, U.S. Open and Open Championship. His best finish was a tie for sixth place in 2017.
“That tournament was so important to my amateur career,” he said. “It made my aspirations so much higher. It made me dream of playing in the Masters at Augusta National. It made me work harder on my game and taught me the value and importance of preparation.”
Pereda turned professional in the fall of 2018, after playing that summer in his second consecutive U.S. Amateur and then representing Mexico in the World Amateur Team Championships in Dublin, Ireland.
“It was what I really wanted to do after I won that tournament in Mexico as an amateur,” he said. “But only after I finished college, as my mother had requested.”
Pereda enjoyed early success as a pro, winning right away that fall on the Mexican tour, which is now called Giro de Golf Profesional Mexicana. The following year, he made his way to the PGA Tour Latinoamérica, and that was where Pereda mostly competed through 2023.
“Whenever I am struggling, I tell myself, ‘If I can hole out from 250 yards on the PGA Tour, I can do pretty much anything.’”
RAÚL PEREDA
There were tough stretches, such as the time he was hospitalized on New Year’s Eve in 2019 with myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart. “I was in the hospital for four days,” he said. “I had a virus of some sort, but the doctors never told me exactly what it was. I am pretty sure it was COVID, because some people suffered from an inflamed heart when they came down with that virus. But I don’t know for sure.”
Fortunately, his health improved, and over time so did his play.
Perhaps his biggest moment during that stretch came last spring when Pereda received a sponsor exemption to play in the Mexico Open – and in the second round eagled the par-4 16th hole at the Vidanta Vallarta Golf Club when he holed his fairway wood approach shot from 249 yards.
Pereda ended up tying for 60th in that event, following rounds of 65-70-70 with a rather disappointing 76. But his play the first few days reinforced his belief that he belonged out there.
“Whenever I am struggling, I tell myself, ‘If I can hole out from 250 yards on the PGA Tour, I can do pretty much anything,’” he said to journalists after his second-round 67 at the PGA Tour Q-School, which was played quite fortuitously for Pereda at a pair of Jacksonville courses he knew well from his college days: Sawgrass Country Club and Dye’s Valley Course at TPC Sawgrass.
Earning his PGA Tour card a couple of days later validated Pereda’s belief in himself and his game.
“I love golf,” said the man who was ranked No. 891 in the world at the time.
“I know I make mistakes on the course, but I accept that failure happens for a reason and that I have to learn from those errors and keep working hard.”
“I want to be the best player in the world,” added Pereda, who counts Knox and another golfer with PGA Tour props, Jeff Klauk, as mentors who have helped him grow as a player. “But I know that I have a long way to go.”
Getting to the PGA Tour was the next big step on that journey. It also made Pereda another one of those heroes whom the founders of the Latin America Amateur Championship hoped to create.
E-MAIL JOHN
Top: By earning his Tour card in 2023, Raúl Pereda is now the only Mexican player on the PGA Tour.
Keyur Khamar, PGA TOUR via Getty Images