The tournament organized for the past fourteen years by the Spanish-Mexican coffee magnate Domingo Muguira is undoubtedly the most attractive of all those held in the world. Not only Mexican fans await it like May water, but golfers from many other countries have it fixed in their calendars as an unmissable event.
Yes, this tournament is much more than a simple competition: it is a whole week of coexistence, fun and sporting practice in which golfing camaraderie is wasted, which does not prevent, on the other hand, that the more than 200 participants fight hard to get one of the most precious prizes of the best bag that an amateur competition can dream of. There is nothing like it in the world.
The most remarkable of the prizes are the eleven cars that are won, always in the most marked par 3’s or by hole in one or by being the ball closest to the flag. The cars are all given in one way or another, as well as a motorcycle, plasma televisions, countless complete golf sets, etc., etc., etc.
Under the sponsorship of Café Los Portales, the tournament, which is always held during the first week of November, has a budget of over $250,000, an amount that many professional competitions would like to have.
Although it has once been played in Chiapas, the permanent venue for the competition is the city of Córdoba, in the state of Veracruz. It is played at the Club de Córdoba and the Santa Gertrudis de Orizaba, a neighboring city. Two nine-hole courses where the three days of competition and the multiple activities that take place around it are elucidated.
Although the final ranking is important, what counts most here is who gets the cars, who gets a hole in one or who gets the closest ball to the flag in the par 3’s that are determined.
The truth is that all this is a pure party that starts on a Thursday and ends on Sunday with the last round and the awards dinner.
In the two courses where the game is played, there is non-stop eating and drinking (tequila can be dangerous in the middle of the round). Every night there is a big party with entertainment, dinner and good vibes in abundance.
At a sporting level the tournament offers several specific curiosities made in Domingo Muguira, for example in the par 3 where the cars are delivered, four more holes are drilled around the one with the flag at a distance of about 30 centimeters, and it counts as a hole in one if the ball enters any of them.
The opening night is organized, to warm up, a night shot from about 120 meters to a psychedelically illuminated green. The prize for the winner is a magnificent motorcycle.
SPANIARDS IN MEXICO
For the past eleven years a group of Spaniards, almost all from Benahavís (Málaga), has been traveling to Mexico to participate in this week-long golf festival.
This year the Spanish delegation was composed of Ake Olofssom, Alberto Mena Castilla, Mirian Cano, Mats Olofsson, Esteban ‘Chiqui’ Ruiz, Jamal Benabdalah, Francisco Ramos and Antonio Sanchez, from Andalucia Golf.
Domingo Muguira certainly gives us a special treatment, he goes out of his way to make us feel comfortable and always organizes an unforgettable week for us.
He came up with the idea, for example, of having a Mexico-Spain showdown the day before the tournament started, and for that he selected eight Mexicans to play against us. Sixteen people playing a match in which the best ball counted.
It was fun, of course. The best of the day was Alberto Mena’s albatross, holing a two-putt on a par 5, not easy at all. In the end there was a tie between the two countries and no one won the prize of 1,000 euros that we were playing for. The one who did win one of the eleven cars in dispute was Jamal Benabdalah from Melilla, so the Spanish delegation did not come away empty-handed, and others, such as Alberto Mena and Francisco Ramos, won important prizes.
The owner of the Los Portales café is of Spanish descent – his parents were from Cantabria – and has dual nationality. Every summer he spends at least a month in Marbella playing golf at Los Arqueros, very often in the company of Bishop Onésimo Cepeda Silva, the only golfing bishop I know, who also never forgets his summer on the Costa del Sol.
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