Alejandro Alonso (16-11-2002, Mexico City) played football as a child. “Like any other Mexican kid, otherwise you were considered weird,” he points out. On weekends, he would accompany his father to play golf at the Los Encinos course in Lerma, very close to his home. He didn’t like it much, he preferred football, naturally, considering that Italian and Spanish blood runs through his veins. His life took a turn at the age of 10 while sitting in front of the television. Because life can also take turns at 10 years old.
“I started watching The short game, a Netflix documentary about the US Kids Golf World Championship. It was filmed in 2012 and aired the following year. I was mesmerised. Kids from all over the world competing at Pinehurst. I remember telling myself: I want to be there, I want to be there,” he recalls. Today Ale Alonso shares his story with Ten Golf, his beginnings, his aspiration to reach the PGA Tour and his dream of playing in the Ryder Cup one day. A Mexican in the Ryder Cup? It also seemed impossible that he could play in the US Kids World Championship…
Shortly after watching the documentary, fate gave him a definitive nod. He found out that the Mexican qualifying phase for the 2014 US Kids World Championship was going to be played at Los Encinos. More than a nod, it was a shout in the ear. Now he took golf seriously. Football was set aside, and he started training hard. He wanted to be like Allan Kournikova, the protagonist of the Netflix film. It wasn’t an easy challenge. Only the winner qualified for Pinehurst. “I won by 14 strokes. It was amazing,” he says. Golf, with its ups and downs, had come to stay.
At 13, he went to study in England with the aim, among others, of playing golf. He couldn’t practise as much as he thought (the bad weather was a serious inconvenience) and a year later he joined an academy in Florida. There he played more golf and improved his level. At 16, his family moved to Texas. They reunited. Golf was already an absolute part of his life and was an important factor when choosing a university. They were looking for a private one, with good weather, a good academic level, and if it was Jesuit, even better. They chose Loyola Marymount in California. Bingo. He studied Finance.
Alonso has no complaints about the university, but things weren’t always easy. “There were very high-quality coaches, very good people,” he says without making a single excuse. However, it was tough. In the first semester, he didn’t manage to qualify for the team. It was a kind of wall. The demand in US college golf is very high. Being on a team doesn’t guarantee you’ll play tournaments. You have to earn it.
In the second semester, he played a bit more, achieved some very good results, but the second year got worse. He barely played two tournaments. His mind started to wander, although always with the hope that everything could change. Alonso didn’t throw in the towel… at least not yet. The start of the third year wasn’t much better. He wasn’t playing well. He was lost. He started looking for work in the finance world, what he was studying, even if it was as an intern to prepare for his future. Numbers were pushing golf aside.
Everything turned around again at Christmas 2023. He was 21 years old. Life can also take turns at 21. Curiously, it was during a long trip through Spain to explore his roots. “My great-grandfather was Francisco Alonso Astor, born in 1899 in Novelda, Alicante province, and emigrated to Mexico in the 1930s. My great-grandmother was Alma Blasco Valdés, born in Madrid in 1911 and also emigrated to Mexico in those same years. She was the daughter of Wenseslao Blasco, from Zaragoza, and granddaughter of Eusebio Blasco, a famous writer and poet from Zaragoza, friend of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer.
During the trip, while in Madrid, he looked for a place to keep practising. Things weren’t going well with golf, but Alejandro was going to try until the end. He called his compatriot Omar Morales, who was at UCLA, a teammate of Pablo Ereño, a Madrid golfer who graduated this summer and has already played on the DP World Tour and the Korn Ferry Tour. They got in touch and arranged to train at the Centro Nacional de Golf. “It was a turning point. I loved being with him, talking and practising, and I told myself: come on, I have to try. I really like this. I want to be a professional. I know I can do well. Watching good golf made me change my attitude,” he explains.
The start of 2024 was different. The wind had changed. He always made the team and started playing important tournaments in Arizona, Stanford, or San Diego. He finished second in the Jackrabbit Invitational. The results were coming, but above all, he was playing well. It was a great year, although that Christmas he had another setback. During a holiday in Australia, he broke a finger in a minor car accident and had to undergo surgery. He returned to university just in time to compete in The Prestige, the most important tournament at the time. The coach threw down the gauntlet: “show me you’re okay.” He played the team qualifier and won by four or five strokes, he recalls. He played the tournament and finished tenth. That was a boost, the definitive confidence boost to turn professional.
Shortly after finishing university, he won the Mexican Professional Tour School, a circuit with quite a level and ten events during the year. He already had a first job, but he wanted more. He also played the DP World Tour school and was eliminated in the first phase by just one stroke. There he competed under the Spanish flag. He has dual nationality. Now, he is in the midst of the battle at the PGA Tour School. He passed the pre-qualifier at La Quinta Country Club in September and just ten days ago also passed the first phase at Sand Creek Station in Kansas. He finished in tenth position with rounds of 68, 68, 68, and 74, finishing with two birdies in the last three holes when the pressure was on. Another boost.
In the PGA Tour School pre-qualifier, it was very windy, and his swing got out of sync. In Belgium, he tried to find solutions as best he could, but he felt too alone. A lot of confusion. His lifelong coach is Steve Dahlby in Texas. He trusts him completely. No one understands Alonso’s swing better than him, but since turning pro, they have drifted apart because Alejandro has moved to Arizona. He had to look for other solutions and found it in Donnie Massengale. “It has been a very easy transition. We have continued with what I was doing with Dahlby, without making many changes. It was just what I wanted,” he notes.
With his help and that of Manny Gutiérrez, a caddie recommended by Raúl Pereda, a Mexican professional on the PGA Tour, Alonso has played what is probably the best golf of his life in that first phase of the American circuit school. Now it’s time to prepare for the second, which will be held at five courses in the United States from December 2 to 5. It’s the step before the grand final. If he passes, he will have already secured the PGA Tour Americas card and will be on the brink of his first dream. The top 5 of the Final get the PGA Tour card, and the top 50 get full Korn Ferry rights.
We say the first because the second is the Ryder Cup. “I would love to play it one day. It would be a great story. I don’t think there’s a better experience than the Ryder,” he says, still excited about what was experienced at Bethpage. He doesn’t even know today what he would have to do to play it, but he trusts that his Spanish ancestors will be enough. “It’s a dream, it would be amazing. If you get there, it means you’re top among the top.”
What a journey it would be: from Netflix to the Ryder Cup.
