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PGA Tour Latinoamérica moving Tour Championship to Trump Doral’s Golden Palm course

October 18, 2018

A Trump course will soon host a professional golf event again, this time on the PGA Tour Latinoamérica.

That tour’s season-ending championship, the Tour Championship-Snell Championship, will take place at Trump National Doral’s Golden Palm course in southern Florida. The event will take place this year Nov. 29-Dec. 2.

“It’s exciting to go to a well-known, challenging site,” Tour president Jack Warfield said in a press release.. “With all the storylines during the final week of the season as players battle for Order of Merit position, the Golden Palm Course will be a terrific place for all of us to watch the drama unfold.”

The top 60 players in the Order of Merit on the Lationamérica tour advance to the Tour Championship. The top five money earners will then earn membership on the Web.com Tour, one step below the PGA Tour.

As for the new host course, it has undergone a complete renovation from course architect Gil Hanse. The Golden Palm course is just one of four courses at Doral, alongside Red Tiger, Silver Fox and Blue Monster, which was was a longtime host for the PGA Tour. The currently named WGC-Mexico Championship was hosted at Trump National Doral for 10 years from 2007 to 2016.

The Tour promised that the move was not political, though it was widely received as such. The Tour did note, months earlier, that Trump’s comments regarding Muslim immigrants were “inconsistent with our strong commitment to an inclusive and welcoming environment in the game of golf.” When the move was officially announced by the PGA Tour, it was highly criticized by then-campaigning Donald Trump. Trump said in an interview, “I hope they have kidnapping insurance.”

Prior to 2006, the course hosted the Doral Open for more than 40 years, since the club opened in 1962.

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