The PGA Tour is making its debut south of the border this week with the Mayakoba Golf Classic in an area known as the Riviera Maya. Fittingly enough, the Greg Norman-designed El Camaleon golf course playing host to the event was built for tourists.

"The whole country is excited," said Toledo, a native of Mexicali and among the nation's more successful golfers. "All the Mexican people see the best players on TV. Now they're seeing them for real, in their own country. This is the biggest thing that can happen for golf in Mexico. I'm really, really surprised we haven't had it before."

Despite the history being made, this event isn't even getting top billing on this week's PGA Tour calendar.

The world's top 64 players are at the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship in Arizona. Some others stayed away out of concerns about the course, the country and other unknowns that come with any first-time event.

"All the players I've been talking to, they're excited, they're very happy," Toledo said. "It's not Pebble Beach, but it's just wonderful. It's the best golf course that I've ever played in Mexico."

Billed as the PGA Tour's Cancun event, the tournament actually is being held in another part of the Quintana Roo state, south of Cancun and just north of Playa del Carmen, in a resort community called Mayakoba that features jungles, exotic animals and a unique underground water system.

The Norman-designed course and the first of five hotels planned for the area opened in late 2005, a few months after Hurricane Wilma tore through.

The 7,000-plus-yard layout of El Cameleon features two oceanside holes and a cave-like cenote, a natural underground passageway that connects a giant opening on the middle of the first fairway (known as "Devil's Mouth") to a less-noticeable opening between the second hole and third tee box.

The PGA Tour is under contract to return here through 2012, so it's possible the less-than-perfect timing of this year's event was intentional, making it somewhat of a dress rehearsal. How things go, on and off the course for the golfers and their families, could determine where the tournament lands on the 2008 calendar.