PGA Tour moving Donald Trump’s Doral event to Mexico, according to reports

The PGA Tour will move its long-running Miami tournament from Trump National Doral to Mexico, according to multiple reports as well as Doral owner and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

“I just heard that the PGA Tour is taking their tournament out of Miami and moving it to Mexico,” Trump said Tuesday on Fox News’ Hannity show. “They’re moving it to Mexico City which, by the way, I hope they have kidnapping insurance.”

Golf Channel confirmed the move with both the PGA Tour and the Trump organization on Wednesday morning, adding that Commissioner Tim Finchem would make a statement later on Wednesday.

The tournament’s outgoing chair also told the Miami Herald that Mexico City is the relocation spot for the former WGC-Cadillac Championship. Cadillac’s sponsorship of the Doral event ended after the March tilt.

“I believe they are sincere when they said they didn’t want to leave an event with a 54-year history,” Butch Buchholz told the Miami Herald. “They’ve got an obligation to their board and they couldn’t find a sponsor so they had to move. They don’t have a choice. The PGA Tour didn’t have a choice, If you don’t have a sponsor what can you do?”

What an irony it would be if the tour shifted to south of the border the tournament most recently associated with a candidate whose comments about Mexican and Muslim immigrants brought a statement from tour officials late last year.

“The PGA Tour has had a 53-year commitment to the Doral community, the greater Miami area and the charities that have benefited from the tournament,” the tour said in December after Trump proposed a temporary ban on Muslim immigrants entering the U.S. “Given this commitment, we are moving forward with holding the 2016 event at the [Trump Doral] Blue Monster. Immediately after the completion of the 2016 tournament, we will explore all options regarding the event’s future.”

While the PGA of America pulled the plug on last fall’s Grand Slam of Golf rather than stage it at Trump’s course in Los Angeles, the PGA Tour went ahead with the 2016 Cadillac contest in March after aforementioned statement that suggested Doral was already in the rear-view mirror.

Doral’s Blue Monster has been a regular stop on the tour schedule in some form since 1962. Trump has sunk a boatload of money into revamping the track since he bought it in 2012, and though PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem in 2013 signed a 10-year contract to remain in Miami, he could opt out of it if there was no sponsor.

The stop at Doral has been a fixture both on the PGA Tour rota and the spring sports schedule in Miami. It’s probably the biggest event in golf in that first quarter of the year leading into the Masters. With no sponsor for the 2017 edition at Doral, the Tour used its opt out clause with the historic event and will reportedly move it to Mexico. Buchholz denied the lack of sponsorship was due to Trump’s visible involvement with the event.

“Cadillac was going to leave,” Buchholz said. “It had nothing to do with Trump. They said they’re changing their whole marketing strategy. The tour had almost a year to find a replacement.”