Defending champion Jake Knapp headlines field for 2025 Mexico Open at VidantaWorld
The West Coast Swing finishes with the PGA Tour heading south of the border for the Mexico Open at VidantaWorld.
Its position in the schedule is just ahead of the Florida Swing but right after a second signature event, meaning the many of the game's biggest names are taking a week off before heading to the Sunshine State.
Jake Knapp returns to Vallarta, Mexico, as the defending champion and he'll be joined by Akshay Bhatia, Rasmus and Nicolai Hojgaard, and Maverick McNealy. The field will be 132.
There are 14 sponsor exemptions with Padraig Harrington receiving one of them and 17-year-old Blades Brown also getting one.
The winner will receive $1.26 million of the $7 million purse and 500 FedEx Cup points.
Mexico Open at VidantaWorld 2025 field
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When Azinger stunned him with a hole-out bunker shot that trickled into the hole on the 18th green at Muirfield Village Golf Club to steal the 1993 Memorial Tournament, he made a bee line to Stewart while they were still standing on the 18th green. "Payne, I'm really sorry," Azinger said. Stewart had held the lead most of the day. "It's OK, bud," Stewart answered. "That's part of it. That's the game." Azinger tried to console him again as they signed their scorecards. During his victory speech, Azinger expressed mixed emotion for breaking the heart of one of his closest pals and wondered if Stewart was back at his locker, shattered and choking back tears. But it turned out Stewart wasn't too broken up. 'I knew he was OK when I got back to the locker room and there were bananas stuffed up in the toes of my shoes," Azinger recalled. Not long ago, Stewart, who died in a plane crash in 1999 during the week of the Tour Championship, went 1 up in their back-and-forth game of pranks when his widow, Tracy, and son, Aaron, surprised him with news that he had been named the recipient of this year's Payne Stewart Award, which is presented annually by the PGA Tour to a professional golfer who best exemplifies Stewart's steadfast values of character, charity and sportsmanship. 'I just did not see this coming at all,' Azinger said. 'Gosh, I don't get tricked very often.' Azinger and Stewart, an 11-time Tour winner and World Golf Hall of Fame member, met in Hattiesburg, Miss., at what is now the Sanderson Farms Championship in 1982. 'I thought he had earrings in his ear,' recalled Azinger, who later learned it was a form of acupuncture. 'I became a better player the second I shook his hand.' 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To say he was nervous during the sudden-death playoff with Greg Norman with a major championship on the line would be like saying the Titanic took on a little water. He told CBS's Jim Nantz about the neon flashes going off in his eyes every time his heart took a beat. His breakthrough victory that shed the label of best player never to win a major was expected to open the floodgates for Azinger but he soon would face an even bigger foe. Whenever Azinger lifted the Wanamaker Trophy, he felt a dull, throbbing pain in his right shoulder. Doctors eventually diagnosed Azinger with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer he beat after six months of chemotherapy and five weeks of radiation. While he returned to the winner's circle post-cancer, Azinger's diagnosis afforded him the opportunity to work in television in 1995 during his recovery, and he has made a successful second career as a television analyst, working most recently for the PGA Tour Champions. 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