Latin America Amateur Championship: Notes From Panama, Wednesday

A key reason I always jump at the chance to attend the Latin America Amateur Championship (LAAC) and the Asia Pacific Amateur Championship (AAC) is that I always experience some kind of memorable adventure trying to make my way to them.

This is the 7th LAAC I’ve attended and I’ve been to four instalments of the AAC to boot. I have some great stories about trying to get on the wrong flight to Santiago, fearing for my personal safety having lied about my reasons for going to Shanghai and getting thoroughly lost in Kawagoe City…

But, to this point, my most arduous journey was for last year’s LAAC in Puerto Rico. It all started off smoothly as my first flight from Aberdeen to London went on time. Things took a turn for the worse (although relatively not so much for me) when someone on my flight to Miami was taken ill while we were still on the tarmac at Heathrow. It took four hours to sort that which was more than enough time for me to miss my connection at the other end. Cue a four-hour queue to get through immigration and a wrestling match (nearly literally) to secure a room in the airport hotel. Things seemed to be sorted, until the following morning when I went to check in for my re-booked flight to San Juan. There had been a total meltdown of US air-traffic control systems that led to another delay of multiple hours. I finally got to Puerto Rico and was running so late that I thought I ought to go straight to the course. I hadn’t realised the media centre was actually at the media hotel and when I got to the golf club, everybody had gone home and there was no transport available to take me back… Good.

Compared then to that 56-hour marathon, this journey to Panama was like a cool breeze. Well, it was certainly chilly when I set out as the pic above of my house on Monday shows. It was -10 degrees C in Aberdeenshire in fact, and I had to dig my car out of a snow drift at 3.30am on Tuesday morning to slide my way to the airport. After a mile or so of driving I said to Jessie (wife), who was accompanying me to take the car home, “Can you see anything?” “No…” she replied with shaky voice. We realised the headlights were still caked with snow and needed a goodly amount of scraping to be cleared – not fun with a blizzard raging.

I got here though and to slightly different conditions… Which is a very roundabout way of getting to my first point:

It's hot

It’s actually more than 40 degrees C hotter than the weather I left in Scotland – well above 30 right now… I went out for a walk around a few of the holes at Santa Maria Golf Club earlier and got through two bottles of water in about 30 minutes and sweated out more than I put in. My tatty old 2015 Open cap went from faded, sun-bleached brown (it was once navy) to dark mud colour. The players practising in these conditions are understandably trying to stay cool – Lots of umbrellas up and they’re looking for shade where available. There isn’t too much out there because the course is relatively young (completed in 2012) and it’s fairly wide open. Although it is surrounded by quite a bit of property because it’s clear that:

Panama is growing

Since I was last here in 2017, it seems a considerable amount of building work has been completed. There are high-rises going up all over the shop. Certainly around the Santa Maria golf course. There’s a great deal of activity with construction on a significant scale. There’s one high rise being built by the 8th hole that I was hurting my neck trying to see to the top of. Slightly scarily, when I did look up I could see workers busy at the very highest points with a flock of vultures circling them. A touch ominous, but I suppose it would be worse if the hungry birds were wandering around on the ground at the bottom.

Here above is a pic of an interesting sight out on course – this appears to be an unfinished motorway slip road that comes down right beside the 7th green. It’s quite a unique feature of this course (not sure a hugely desirable one) that a section of it is played on the other side of a fairly major motorway… You have to go under it to play holes 2-7. Well, it’s different anyway…

But, Panama is clearly a thriving city and the financial district where I’m staying is confirmation of that. There are bustling restaurants and bars, flash cars and stylish people. Given my sweat patches and huffing and puffing in the heat, I can’t count myself amongst them.

Excitement Is Building

The anticipation from the players for the start of the event is palpable. Now in its ninth edition, they’re very aware of what is up for grabs this week – A start in three Majors! But they’re also just thrilled to be here at an event of this quality. Even the lunches are exciting – see below.

Players, officials and even we lowly journalists are looked after supremely well... (It's what you might expect when you get The R&A, USGA and Masters Tournament together to organise an event I guess,) but everything is done to the highest level. This lunch consisted of Roquefort chicken, Teriyaki steak, chorizo and potatoes, rice and peas and a dressed salad. It was extremely good.

The players are good too

There are 108 players here this week and the standard is very high. The youngest in the field is 14-year-old Gustavo Giacometti of Brazil, the oldest is 55-year-old Alvaro Ortiz of Costa Rica. The veteran has played in every LAAC to date. He feels this one could be his last though.

“It’s been a fun ride, a lot of experiences,” he says. “But the courses are getting too long for me so this might be a good time to step back, while I am still breaking 80.

Two Mexican players are the best placed on the World Amateur Golf Ranking coming into this week – Omar Morales who is at the University of California and Santiago De la Fuente who is a senior at the University of Houston. In fact, no fewer than 65 players in the field this week are either current, past or future students at US colleges.

The competition proper gets underway at 7am tomorrow morning and I’ll be filing reports each day on how it's progressing. It’s a course that looks relatively straightforward with water the main hazard. The greens appear undulating though so a good short game will be key. I expect some good scoring… Could Mateo Fernandez De Oliveira’s record total of 23-under from last year be bettered. I doubt it, but tomorrow’s early play will give us a good idea on that. I’ll keep you posted.