Welcome, WGC Mexico City's Club de Chapultepec

The WGC Not Trump Doral lands in Mexico City this week for the first time, and while early reports suggested a boondoggle based on past issues, PGA Tour rules official Gary Young tells me the course and operation look promising.

Club de Chapultepec is no Doral Blue Monster, one of the more consistently compelling Tour stops in any of its many design iterations. And yes, the Mexico City club replacing Doral is tight, tree-lined Willie and Alex Smith design dating to 1921 but now featuring tired elements that won't resonate with television audiences increasingly aware of dated features. (Fatigued bunkers set atop the landscape, fountains in lakes, etc.).

Still, Young says the combination of a stern driving test, sneaky green and property tilting that will reward sound play, and the endurance element caused by the elevation (7600 feet) should make for some challenging golf.

Not that we have a choice: a seven-year contract was signed for the WGC Mexico when the PGA Tour could not find a Doral replacement sponsor and exercised a contract-out to get them away from the future President's resort. Michael Bamberger writes the first of what figures to be many pieces lamenting this wound to the Florida swing's heart.

This year, for the first time since 1961, there is no Doral stop. Instead, this week the Tour is going to the Club de Golf Chapultepec in Mexico City. It arranged two charter flights, one to accommodate players who participated on Monday at the Seminole Member-Pro. You hope it will be a great tournament, in Mexico. Since becoming a World Golf Championship, the event at Doral had certainly lost its mojo—and its sponsorship. A change was needed. But the point here is that the Tour had something that was easy, and it got replaced with something that sounds like work.

As for this year's course, here is a PGATour.com slideshow of all 18.

Note the opener: a driveable par-4, while the last hole is just 388 yards, uphill. That's still short in altitude where Young estimates a minimum 10% distance boost, but more likely 15%.

For golf history and design wonks, the original course was started by 1899 U.S. Open champion Willie Smith of the Carnoustie Smith's. He had moved to Mexico City in 1904 to be a golf pro, and later was injured in the Mexican Revolution because he refused to leave his post at the club.

Smith died of pneumonia in 1916 before completing the course, which his brother Alex finished. Alex won U.S. Opens in 1906 and 1910.

Damon Hack and I discussed the early positive signs for those en route to Mexico City.