Trump slams PGA event's move from his resort to Mexico City
DUBLIN, Ohio - The chairman of the World Golf Championship held at Donald Trump's golf resort at Doral says the tournament is moving to Mexico City.
Trump said Tuesday night in a Fox News interview with Sean Hannity that he heard the PGA Tour is taking the event out of Miami and moving it to Mexico. The presumptive GOP nominee added that "I hope they have kidnapping insurance."
PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem was expected to discuss the change Wednesday afternoon at the Memorial.
Butch Buchholz is tournament chairman of the Cadillac Championship. He told the Miami Herald that the tour is leaving Doral for Mexico City because it couldn't find a title sponsor. The PGA Tour has a contract with Doral through 2023, although there is a provision that a new title sponsor would have the right to take the tournament somewhere else. Cadillac is in the final year of its title sponsorship and has said it's not going to renew.
Doral has been the longest-running PGA Tour event in Florida and a popular part of the PGA Tour since 1962, and this could very well be the last one.
Trump has been scooping up golf properties from Scotland to Dubai, from Los Angeles to New York and Florida, for more than a decade. They are good courses, enough that majors from three tours will be held on them over the next six years -- the 2017 U.S. Women's Open and 2022 PGA Championship at Trump National in Bedminster, New Jersey, and the 2017 Senior PGA Championship at Trump National in Potomac Falls, Virginia.
Whether those championships will be played at his courses is still to be determined. The PGA of America last year canceled its Grand Slam of Golf at Trump's course in Los Angeles shortly after his comments about Mexican immigrants when Trump announced his candidacy.