COLUMN: The Best Golf Course in Mexico

By Tobin Barnes
A guard mans the gate to the entrance of the Pamilla Resort and Golf Course. It must be to keep the riff-raff out—and that’d normally be me.

But not today.

Today I’ve got a pass to play the “best golf course in Mexico.” However, I’ve learned that like the word “soon,” the word “best” in Mexico is a variable, kind of like “x” in a mathematical equation.

Turns out that there might be at least ten “best” courses down here, if not more. Absolute words like “best” in Mexico are handy adjectives that can be liberally spread around, like jam on toast—that way everybody gets a little.

Nevertheless, Pamilla’s a pretty good golf course—designed by Jack Nicklaus—and I get to play it twice for free—today and tomorrow.

Yeah, even though my wife sat through the same time shares presentation I did to get these two passes and more, she’s decided she’d instead rather stay at our seaside hotel to walk the beach and sit around thare pool while I’m out playing golf.

And, hey, I didn’t have to twist her arm or anything. The go-ahead was not asked for but freely dispensed, nonetheless.

You see, she’s not a golf nut like I am. Unlike me, she can take it or leave it, while my leaving it would be tantamount to a humanitarian tragedy.

Anyway, my taxi pulls up to the pro shop, and immediately one of the staff members grabs my bag and puts it on a cart. Then he throws some ice into the cart’s cooler where there’s already six bottled waters, gets a cup, fills that with ice and water, and, hey, I’m ready to go.

Then when I’m done playing each day, other staff members are Johnny on the spot to clean my clubs (at home, I clean my clubs maybe three times a year, counting rainy days). Next, they haul them out to the parking lot. What can I do but tip these guys, which, of course, seems to be the point.

Besides the cooler and the poured ice water, my cart’s outfitted with two air conditioners, one for the driver and one for the passenger. My wife, who had carefully read a Los Cabos travel guide, had said, “Hey, maybe you’ll get a cart with an air conditioner.”

I had scoffed at her suggestion heartily. Air conditioner on a golf cart? Har! In forty years of playing golf, I’d never heard of such a thing. Didn’t make sense.

Well, at first class Pamilla, it makes sense when you’re trying to pamper rich people.

When I got back to the hotel, I felt morally obliged to tell my wife she was right. She cherishes those moments when I’m wrong.

But it turned out to be not my only mistake. One of the two days I was at Pamilla, I forgot to wear a collared shirt. Though I was fully aware that I wasn’t in South Dakota anymore, Toto, I realized that I’d really goofed when the pro shop attendant pointed out their policy.

Miles away from our hotel with my tee time coming up, my only recourse was to buy a shirt on the spot. And I knew I was going to have to pay through the nose. After a quick scan through their racks of shirts, I sheepishly went back to the attendant and asked if they had any shirts on sale. Of course, that’s like going into Tiffany’s and asking if you could maybe paw through their bargain basket.

Surprisingly enough, the pro shop did have a sale rack. However, the cheapest shirt I could find was $70. I’d never bought a $70 shirt in my life until that day. But at least it had a Pamilla logo on it. Good for a conversation starter, if nothing else.

Later, one of the guys in my foursome said to me, “You must play here a lot. I see you’ve got a Pamilla shirt.”

I casually replied, “Not really.”

But then, he’d paid $250 to be in my foursome that afternoon. And he thought that wasn’t too bad because if he’d gotten a morning tee time, it would have been $350. I just let him keep thinking that $250 is no big deal for a guy that wears $70 shirts.

Whatever.

And no doubt the course was gorgeous, the nicest by miles of any I’ve been on, but midway through the round it kind of seemed to me that the golf here was pretty much like golf on my home course—a few good shots, but mostly mediocre or lousy ones. Uh huh, just like usual, except with a heck of a lot more sand traps you gotta hack your way out of.

But then at least at home I’d never be paying upwards of three bucks a pop to swing at a golf ball like the other guys in my foursome here in Mexico.