Players should enjoy working vacation in Mexico

Because PGA Tour players are independent contractors, they come and go as they please. Outside of the Ryder Cup, there’s no such thing as a team bus or team hotel. So at round’s end, players climb into their luxury courtesy cars and generally scatter to the four winds, or, considering the Tour’s ever-increasing purses, the Four Seasons, anyway.

Of course, there are exceptions to the rule. Vacation destinations that masquerade as annual Tour stops attract a large percentage of players who actually stay on property, close to the golf course, often with family in tow. In our neck of the woods, Sea Pines is the temporary address of the players competing in Hilton Head’s Verizon Heritage. For the pros that don’t live in greater Orlando anyway, the on-site hotels at the Walt Disney World Resort Classic always attract the lion’s share of the field. Now there’s another, intriguingly located South of the Border.

The inaugural Mayakoba Classic at Riviera Maya will be contested on February 19th to 25th. Despite the fact that this opposite field event will be played concurrently with the very popular Accenture Match Play Championship and its all-star lineup, it’s going to attract some well-deserved attention.

First, this will be the first-ever official PGA Tour event in Mexico. The location, just south of Cancun on the Yucatan Peninsula, is spectacular, but easily accessible from the U.S. Secondly, the Greg Norman-designed El Cameleón Golf Course is a stunning amalgamation of jungle-lined fairways, ball-gobbling cenotes (mid-fairway caves that lead to underground rivers) ice-blue canals, rock quarries, and a couple of seaside par 3s. Thirdly, the event will afford a sweeping spotlight on the burgeoning golf appeal of the Yucatan region. Think Mexico’s high end golf begins and ends in Cabo San Lucas? Think again. The Shark’s work at Mayakoba will garner the TV time. But Jack Nicklaus (Moon Palace) P.B. Dye (Playa Paraiso) and Norman again (Playa Mujeres) help prove conclusively that greater Cancun is far more than just a spot for Spring Break-style bacchanalia, or a jumping off point for Mayan ruins, world-class reef diving and eco-adventures.

Speaking of eco adventures, the folks at Spain’s OHL, a multinational construction and development firm, have masterminded an ingeniously eco-friendly resort. Though finding one’s way from the Fairmont Mayakoba’s main building to one’s elegantly appointed casita can be an adventure, especially after dark. Nonetheless, the pros and their families are going to love it.

The 401-room Fairmont is the first of what will eventually be six luxury hotels integrated seamlessly into nearly 600 acres of mangrove forest, lagoons, canals and jungle that define the property. Unlike the “skyscraper on the beach” mentality that pervades the hotel strip in Cancun itself, about 40 minutes due north, the Mayakoba sensibility is to lay much more softly on the land, working in concert with nature, instead of overwhelming it.

Its part form and part function. The Mexican government is ultra-serious regarding mangrove forest preservation, so a wholesale slash-and-burn attitude not only ran counterculture to OHL’s “green” philosophy, but was strictly illegal, besides. Mangroves stabilize sand and mud with their root structure, maintaining the coast and protecting precious coral reefs. Furthermore, the entire resort has only 1.6 kilometers of shoreline on the sparkling Caribbean, though habitués of any of the six resorts that will eventually be welcoming guests have total access to each hotel’s otherwise-private beach club. Each of the planned hotels will place more emphasis on the cocooning nature of the surrounding jungle, and the dunes, mangroves and coral reefs behind the beach itself will be carefully preserved.

El Camaleon Golf Club. (Photo courtesy of OHL, El Camaleon, Mayakoba, Mexico)

Transportation throughout the resorts is unique. Besides the regular flow of chauffeured golf carts silently coasting among the curving paths, guests can walk, bicycle, or ride the waterways in small electric boats, called “lanchas.” Mayakoba means “city on the water” in the Mayan language, and the unique boating element takes full advantage of the remarkable geography of the Riviera Maya. The region has no surface rivers to speak of. But just a few feet beneath the terra firma lay a series of clear canals that spider-web throughout the property. These flowing canals, filled with the pure rainwater that falls abundantly in the Yucatan region, were uncovered, their sides bolstered with native limestone. They make boating a practical, if not a particularly time-efficient mode of inter-resort transportation. It’ll surely make some visitors think of Venice. But the warm rays of the sun, the superb local cuisine, rife with native fruits and vegetables, the warmth and eager-to-please nature of the staff, all say “Mexico,” loud and clear.

Important Mayan sites like Tulum and Coba, with their remarkable temples and watchtowers, are only an hour’s drive from Mayakoba. Famed Chichen Itza, probably the single biggest attraction in what remains of the Mayan culture, is three hours drive. And while more than a thousand years after their fourth-to-tenth-century heyday, the history of the Mayan people remains somewhat inscrutable. They were brilliant designers and amazing scientists, with their striking pyramids, fabulous carvings, obsession with time (the Mayans calculated that a solar year was 365 days long, and a month 29.5 days centuries before modern science could verifiably make the same claim.) They could also be unspeakably brutal, known to murder as well as mutilate their enemies.

A round of golf at El Cameleón isn’t nearly as terrifying as the prospect of becoming a human sacrifice, but it’s also not some placid walk in the park. Three distinct ecosystems vie for a golfer’s attention -- tropical jungle, the aforementioned mangroves, and oceanfront stretches bisected by limestone canals. Even the pros will be playing the encroaching jungle as a lateral hazard, as the prospect of losing balls into the vegetation -- often on either side of the fairway, is practically a hole-by-hole possibility. This heady combination of anguish and exhilaration can easily be assuaged at round’s end, as soup-to-nuts spa services, currently in place at the Fairmont, but soon to sprout from the other ultra-luxe hotels, will be a large part of Mayakoba’s appeal.

Will Tiger, Phil, Ernie and Vijay ever make it to Mayakoba for a “working vacation?” By Doomsday, or when they fall out of the world’s Top 64, whichever comes first. But there are millions of golf lovers (not to mention beach lovers, snorkeling, tequila, culture, adventure, and plain old romance-lovers) who needn’t wait by their mailbox. That invitation to the World Match Play Championship won’t be arriving. But untold throngs will be arriving at Mayakoba, and soon enough. They’ll be coming to the Fairmont that’s in place, the Rosewood and Banyan Tree Hotels that are currently under construction, and to the other luxury properties soon to spring amidst the lush jungle, minutes from the sparkling Caribbean. Get there ahead of the crowd, and see what Tiger and the other Top Cats will be missing.