MEXICO CITY — Karla Diaz first picked up a golf club when she was 13 and has spent much of her time since then dreaming of a spot on the LPGA Tour.
But no matter how much she plays or how hard she tries, the Mexico City teenager is resigned to the fact that she can't get there from here.
"If you're thinking about the big leagues, you have to look toward the United States," Diaz says after her regular Saturday morning practice session at the Club Campestre, Mexico's oldest golf course.
"That's the trampoline to the professional ranks, where you can improve your technique and, above all, participate in international tournaments and play against other people at higher levels."
She's not the only one who feels that way. With college golf nonexistent and even club competition limited by the fact there are just more than 200 golf courses in a country of 110 million people, Mexico's best female players are now scrambling across the border to U.S. schools, a route many see as the only path to the pros.
When LPGA Futures Tour veteran Marcela Leon of Monterrey accepted an invitation to San Jose State a decade ago, she said she was one of only three Mexican women playing college golf in the U.S. This spring, there were six times as many, playing at such schools as Arizona and Arizona State, Boise State, Michigan State, Kentucky's Murray State and schools all over North Carolina.
"They know that the opportunity is here. That really the best players are coming to the United States to play collegiate golf, to get the experience of just playing with the best players from all over the world," says Andrea Gaston, coach of defending NCAA champion USC.
In that way college golf simply mirrors the LPGA Tour, which comes to Rancho Mirage for this week's Kraft Nabisco Championship with a tour roster that features 122 international players, including 47 from South Korea, 14 from Sweden and 10 from Australia.
But defending champion Lorena Ochoa, a three-time LPGA player of the year who starred at Arizona, is one of only two Mexicans on the tour. Given her country's growing impact on the college level, however, that's a number many expect will grow shortly.
"We're all following her," says Guadalajara's Sophia Sheridan, who won an NCAA regional championship while at California and is the only Mexican besides Ochoa with an LPGA Tour card. "If she hadn't opened the door for me at least -- she was the one that recommended my name and she was the one that convinced me to go -- I wouldn't have gone."
