The creation a decade ago of the Latin America Amateur Championship by the Masters, the R&A and the USGA was as inspired as it was audacious.
Inspired for the ways it built off the early success of the Asia-Pacific Amateur, which the folks from Augusta and St. Andrews had helped establish in 2009. That event had quickly given the game a star in Hideki Matsuyama, who earned the low-amateur honor in the 2011 Masters after taking his first of two consecutive AAC titles in the previous fall. A decade later, the Japanese native won his green jacket.
The AAC also provided a wonderful feel-good story in 2012 when Chinese teen Guan Tianlang captured the championship and went on the following spring to become the youngest ever to make the cut at the Masters, at age 14.
As for the audaciousness of the move, there was nothing timid about starting a tournament with similar goals and ambitions in a less developed part of the golf world. To be sure, the game had toeholds in Argentina, Colombia and Mexico, among other Latin American lands. But the number of elite players in the region was quite small, and the sport nowhere near as popular as soccer and baseball.
How long, then, would it take the LAAC to produce champions that had any chance of making the cut at the Masters, or even making it through the final stages of qualifying for the Open Championship, which were among the spoils that went to the winners of the initial Latin America Amateurs? And how realistic was it to expect alumni from that event to become good enough to compete on the PGA Tour?
Masters chairman Billy Payne showed his confidence in the new championship and its mission when he and the other founding partners announced the formation of the LAAC in early 2014. “We believe this event will be motivating to current and future generations of golfers and one day create heroes who will inspire others to give the game a try,” he said.
And people involved in the development of golf in Latin America at the time expressed similar sentiments. Daniel Vizzolini, the director of championships for the Argentina Golf Association, described the LAAC in a 2015 Masters Journal article as “a landmark development of high competition in Latin America, in part a generous recognition of the region’s efforts in growing the game. The motivation the LAAC will generate in regional amateur golf will be tremendous.”
But many others in golf were not so certain.
“I remember attending the first LAAC at the Pilar Golf Club outside Buenos Aires in 2015,” said Luis Alvarez, who oversees sales and player development in that region for the Acushnet Company, the parent of Titleist and FootJoy. “I liked the idea, but none of us were sure what the future of the championship would be and what impact it might have on golf here.”
Fast forward nearly a decade, and the consensus is that the Latin America Amateur has met, and in many ways exceeded, expectations.
Alvarez is among those who are wholly impressed.
“The LAAC has really put the region on the golf map,” he said. “And it has done a lot as far as developing and motivating young players and giving them a sense of what it takes to compete at a very high level. The tournament is extremely well run, the courses and course set-ups are quite good, the event is televised in more than 110 countries and the quality of play has steadily improved.
Another sign of the LAAC’s effectiveness is the number of golfers younger than 18 who are qualifying for the championship these days – and who are more than holding their own once they do so.
“You now have kids playing college golf throughout the U.S.,” he said. “Some players are qualifying for the U.S. Amateur. Others are winning their national amateur championships. You also have them playing and winning on the PGA Tour, the Korn Ferry Tour and the PGA Tour Latinoamérica. A few have even competed in the Presidents Cup.”
Equally impressive in his mind is the diversity in the nations that have produced LAAC champions. As was expected, golfers from Argentina and Mexico have prevailed. But winners also have hailed from Costa Rica (Paul Chaplet, in 2016) and even more remarkably the Cayman Islands, with Aaron Jarvis, a 19-year-old ranked 1,669th in the world before taking the 2022 event. He then showed his triumph was no fluke by making the cut at the 150th Open Championship in St. Andrews and finishing at one-over par, the second-best 72-hole score among amateurs in the field.
Another sign of the LAAC’s effectiveness is the number of golfers younger than 18 who are qualifying for the championship these days – and who are more than holding their own once they do so. In last year’s tourney, for example, 11 so-called juniors made the cut, with one of those, Erich Fortlage of Paraguay, tying for 12th place.
Tournament organizers certainly have recognized those advances in play and performance, which is why they have enhanced the rewards that go to each victor. It used to be that the Masters was the only professional major to offer a spot to the winner. Now, the Open Championship and the U.S. Open provide exemptions to the winner.
And those opportunities can be life-altering, for allowing Latin America Amateur champions to compete in three of the four professional majors during the year in which they win the LAAC while also rubbing shoulders with the best players in the world. The confidence that comes from such interactions pays big dividends for young golfers. For evidence, look no further than the roster of golfers with whom Jarvis interacted in St. Andrews. His practice-round partners included Phil Mickelson, Pádraig Harrington, Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau.
“And for the first two rounds of the Open, I played with Sergio García and Stewart Cink,” Jarvis said. “When the event was over, I felt like I belonged and could more than hold my own with the best.”
By that time, he had also given his fellow Cayman Islanders and young golfers throughout the region one of those heroes chairman Payne hoped the tournament would create.
“When I played in my first LAAC, I don’t know if any golfers in Latin America were truly ready to compete at those levels. But many of them are now. And so much of that has to do with the championship.” – Miguel Ordoñez
Panamanian Miguel Ordoñez, who is one of only three players to have competed in every Latin America Amateur, is an equally strong supporter of the championship.
“Look at the success of the golfers who have competed in it over the years,” said the 40-year-old Ordoñez, who played on the University of North Florida golf team from 2002 to 2006 and has competed in three U.S. Mid-Amateurs as well as the Crump Cup at Pine Valley. “Look at what Joaquín Niemann has done on both the PGA Tour and LIV. Raúl Pereda and Alejandro Tosti earned their PGA Tour cards last month. Mito Pereira has represented Chile in the Olympics and played in the Presidents Cup.”
“It’s pretty amazing to think of how much Latin American golf has grown and improved in such a short time,” said Ordoñez, the director of membership at Santa Maria Golf Club in Panama City, Panama, site of this week’s Latin America Amateur. “When I played in my first LAAC, I don’t know if any golfers in Latin America were truly ready to compete at those levels. But many of them are now. And so much of that has to do with the championship. Kids here have grown up watching the LAAC and watching people from this part of the world go on to play professionally. They are inspired by what they see and read, and motivated, too.”
That was the idea from the very beginning.