Long week. Intense week. Tired but with a grin from ear to ear, that’s how Raúl Pereda greets us. Barely six days have passed since he achieved one of his biggest dreams in life. We speak with a fighter, a golf worker unknown until now, who has been struggling in less glamorous categories and gives us one of those spectacular stories that golf allows us to enjoy from time to time. Mexico returns to the PGA Tour. In 2024, the player from Veracruz, Raúl Pereda, has earned his full rights to compete in the first division of world golf after winning one of the five cards that were distributed at the PGA Tour School Final.
Eight days ago, this 27-year-old Mexican stood in the School Final with only one tournament on the Circuit under his belt. Just one. Today, Pereda is a full-fledged PGA player and will be able to enjoy what he always dreamed of: “Since I was twelve years old my dream was to reach the PGA Tour, I wanted to be with the best and I have achieved it”. The journey has been long. The player from Veracruz moved to Jacksonville in 2014 to study the career with a scholarship and play on the university golf team. They were four years in which the team grows a lot and goes from being ranked in position 120 to being among the 30 best universities and even being able to play the National Finals. Raúl graduates in 2018. Due to his good performance, the university offers him a scholarship to continue at the university, but after talking to his mother he makes a quick decision: “My dream is to reach the top and I want to try it”. Since then we have been able to find him fighting in the lower divisions of golf and especially in the PGA Tour Latin America where he has played the last four seasons. However, the opportunity to continue growing did not end up arriving and in fact up to three times he did not pass the second Phase of the Korn Ferry Tour School and twice in which he hit the wall of the DP World Tour School. They are difficult years: “I didn’t think about quitting but the truth is that I had a hard time. I had doubts”. There is no one who can knock Pereda down and that is when he decides to take a turn in his career: “Two years ago I had to change my team to be able to clear my head and find new ways of seeing things and motivations”. A step back to be able to make the definitive leap. In this restructuring, he incorporates his current coach, the Swede Anders Forsbrand, a six-time champion on the European circuit. Experience. In his team, we also find a Spanish connection since he has also been working on the short game for more than eight years with Ramon Bescansa with whom he hopes to be able to intensify more training hours together this year.
“The reality is that at the beginning of the season the PGA Tour was not within the most realistic plans” says Pereda, but 2023 was going to bring another big surprise. In fact, they understand each other better together. In April he receives the invitation to debut on the PGA Tour at the Mexico Open. In his first 18 holes, he delivers a card of 65 strokes that put him in the top 4 of the tournament: “I finished in 60th place but the experience of that week helped me a lot in the last round of the School. It taught me how to handle nerves and that I can trust myself and play with the best. I also learned a lot from my last round (he signed 76 strokes and lost 40 positions in the table) and without a doubt that has also helped me a lot this week and I am happy to have been able to turn it around. I set out to change my mentality and I have done it”, reflects Pereda.
Although reaching the top began to seem like a chimera, as we said this 2023 brought another great opportunity under its arm: The return of the PGA Tour School. Raúl is among the top five in the Latin American circuit and earns a place for the second phase of the School where for several hours he was out of the Final Phase but a bogey on the penultimate hole of the last match put him back in: “I was already in the car on my way back to my accommodation loading the results application when a friend called me to tell me that I had finally entered. At that moment I was relieved of a lot of pressure”. How fine is the border between success and failure in golf. A few weeks later he qualifies for the first division of world golf and does so at home, a few meters from his university playing in Florida on two courses that he knows like the palm of his hand and on which he admits to having played more than 60 times.
“I’m still a bit in the clouds, but this is what I’ve wanted for many years and I must take it normally and keep my feet on the fairway. I’m still the same person and I can’t let this change me. I got a promotion at my job but nothing changes. I want to continue being the same”. Mentality of those that go far, as far as the goals that the Mexican sets: “This is the start of a stage, for the beginning of another because we have not reached the top, I want to be the Number One in the World”. You read it right. Mentality and ambition. We will get where we can but the aspirations are the highest.
When defining himself, Pereda stands out with a very combative personality: “I put a lot of heart into things, they tell me that I am a very bad loser, and it is true it burns me to lose, but that leads me to fight and train what I see that prevents me from winning. I am very perfectionist, very meticulous and I have a motto that I like a lot when I train: “Small target, small error” and every day I am adjusting my game. I know I can be 90% better and I am going to work every day to achieve it. If I surround myself with the best team I know I can go very far”.
At 1.75m tall, the Mexican player defines himself as a great ballstriker: “Maybe I’m not the player who hits the hardest but I do have a very good ability to hit it straight from the tee and put the ball in the street, for me that is fundamental. Now if I have to point out my best virtue on the field is that I think I am a great strategist”. For the demanding season to come, he acknowledges that “this year I have to train a lot my game with the irons in green shots from less than 120 yards and with my speed in the putt. That’s where I think I can continue to grow”.
After the departure of Carlos Ortiz, with whom he admits to having a good relationship, and Abraham Ancer to LIV Golf, Pereda brings Mexico back to the top of the PGA Tour and becomes the ninth in the history of his country to play there. Excitement or pressure? “I face it with excitement and responsibility, being the only Mexican on the Tour is something incredible but it is also an opportunity to show my compatriots and the rest of the players that we can get there and that we have the level to stay. I don’t want to be alone. It’s true that I have pressure, but a lot of excitement”, concludes the Mexican.
Next week Pereda will travel to Hawaii for the training week that the new players of the North American circuit have and where he hopes to be able to enter the Sony Open. We will keep you informed about the battles of this combative Mexican fighter.
