Abraham

Ancer

Ancer turned professional in 2013 after graduating from Oklahoma University with a degree in General Studies.

He earned his ticket for the Web.com Tour (now Korn Ferry Tour) in December 2014 by finishing tied for 35th at qualifying school.

Ancer landed his first career win at the 2015 Nova Scotia Open, overcoming the challenge of Bronson Burgoon on a second playoff hole to claim the $117,000 prize money.

That helped him to an 11th-place finish on the regular season money list to secure a PGA Tour card for 2015-16.

Results didn’t go so well, and he returned to the Web.com for another year before regaining his PGA Tour card for 2017-18.

In a much more impressive season, he secured five top-10 finishes including a T4 at the Quicken Loans National which gave him a place in the 2018 Open Championship in July.

Although he missed the cut, he had found his feet on the PGA Tour, earning $1.7million in prize money and being placed 60 th in the FedEx Cup.

Four months after his maiden appearance at the Majors, Ancer entered the 2018 Australian Open on the PGA Tour of Australasia and powered to a five-stroke victory at The Lakes, Sydney.

A week later he was representing Mexico in the World Cup of Golf and along with partner Roberto Diaz ended the year on a high, securing T2 for their nation.

International Team in the 2019 Presidents Cup at Royal Melbourne.

The rookie put in a stellar performance with a 3-1-1 record, making him joint top-scorer for the tournament with 3.5 points, although the US took the overall win 16-14.

Ancer’s Saturday afternoon foursomes match, where he was partnered with Marc Leishman against Justin Thomas and Rickie Fowler, produced a classic.

After the first seven holes, the US pairing were 5-up and that was still the case with eight holes to play.

First Leishman at 11, then Ancer on 12 holed putts to reduce the deficit to three but by the 15th green Ancer needed to sink a 20-foot putt to keep the match alive.

Not only did he make it, Ancer and Leishman combined to win the remaining three holes to tie a spellbinding match.

On a personal note, Ancer had been widely quoted saying how much he would love to play US captain Tiger Woods.

It was Woods who dented his record by beating the talented young Mexican 3&2 in Sunday’s singles.

Abraham Ancer’s debut at the Masters in 2020 was nothing short of eventful. By the end of the second round at Augusta, Ancer was part of a five-man group who shared the lead at 9-under.

Ancer was rubbing shoulders with golf’s elite as among that group was Dustin Johnson, Jon Rahm and Justin Tomas, the first time the world’s top three ranked players had shared the 36-hole lead in a Major.

He remained competitive through round three and while Johnson had stretched his legs with a four-stroke lead, Ancer was T2 with Cameron Smith and Im Sung-jae.

Sunday was a different story. Playing in the final group, Ancer’s challenge fell away with six bogeys on his card while Johnson claimed the green jacket, but he loved the experience all the same.

“The golf course was playing long because it was wet and it was in November,” Ancer told Fairway To Heaven.

“I was hitting the ball really, really well and putting really well and then just like that I’m teeing off in the last group on Sunday.

“That’s when it hit me, I was like ‘wow I am nervous’ but I liked it.

“It didn’t go my way that Sunday. For example on hole two I completely misread this short putt that I had for birdie and after that I didn’t really quite feel comfortable over putts, I was maybe doubting my reads.

“But it was definitely a really cool experience to play with DJ and watch him win his green jacket.”

Finishing runner-up to Rory McIlroy in the Wells Fargo Championship in May 2021 added another $882,900 to Ancer’s winnings and two weeks later he accomplished his best finish at a Major with T8 at the PGA Championship.

Ancer was competing for national honours again in August, finishing T14 for Mexico in the delayed Tokyo Olympics and just a week later he landed that elusive first win on the PGA Tour.

After four rounds of a fiercely contested WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational at TPC Southwind, Ancer, Sam Burns and Hideki Matsuyama were tied at the top of the leaderboard at 16-under.

Ancer finally broke free with a birdie on the second sudden-death playoff hole to scoop up the $1.82m prize money and become just the fourth Mexican golfer to win on the PGA Tour and the first to celebrate a European Tour victory.

Abraham Ancer signed up for LIV Golf in June 2022, in time to play in the second event of the inaugural Invitational Series in Portland.

He was 20th in the official world golf ranking at the time, having previously achieved a career high of 11th, and had been expected to be a part of the 2022 Presidents Cup International team.

Ancer had also banked $15,253,879 in prize money from the PGA Tour and in a statement on his Instagram account @abrahamancer he said: “This new opportunity provides me more time to invest and give back to the game by helping it to grow and flourish in my home country of Mexico.”

He made a promising start, taking 11th place on his debut and finished the season in 19th place in the individual standings.

Ancer achieved the best percentage for fairway hits on the 2022 series, with 76.98% accuracy.

He began 2023 with a tournament win at the PIF Saudi International on the Asian Tour, claiming the event’s first ever wire-to-wire victory, two strokes ahead of runner-up Cameron Young.

In 2023’s LIV Golf League he recorded a season-best third place in Bedminster and with Sergio Garcia’s Fireballs GC celebrated team wins in Tucson and Jeddah.

He was up there with the fairway hits again, sitting second in the end of season statistics with 72.56% accuracy and his 26th place in the individual standings left him just outside the Lock Zone, but he retained his place with Fireballs for 2024.

The win at LIV Golf Hong Kong was last year’s standout moment for Ancer and preceded a run of three more top-10 finishes as he went on to secure 12th place in the season’s individual standings.

There was also an emotional double for his all-Spanish speaking Fireballs at Valderrama as they won the team event at LIV Golf Andalucia while captain Sergio Garcia took the individual prize.

Once again Ancer was keeping the stats men busy and was placed second overall for his fairway hits percentage with 67.32%.

Away from LIV Ancer represented Mexico for the second time at the Olympics in August, finishing T35 at Paris 2024.

Ancer was born in McAllen Texas as that’s where his mother’s doctor had recently moved to, but the family home where he was raised was in Reynosa, Mexico.

That had the benefit in later life of allowing Ancer to qualify for dual Mexican-American citizenship.

“Reynosa is all I knew but it was great,” he said.

“My dad took me to the golf course when I was in diapers, and I fell in love with the game.

“I went to school and then whenever we could we’d go to the golf course, play a bunch of soccer growing up and golf, I just loved it.”

You may notice Abraham Ancer relaxing from time to time in a Flecha Azul hat and there’s good reason.

In 2020 Ancer and business partner Aron Marquez launched Flecha Azul, a tequila company that prides itself on making an authentic, additive-free product from 100 percent blue agave plants, sourced from one of the five regions of Mexico that qualify for the genuine ‘tequila’ name.

An early investor who bought in on the company was Hollywood star and golf fan Mark Wahlberg, who is not shy in helping out with promotional work.

“I love those guys,” Wahlberg said at a launch for the product in Nevada.

“For me everything that we do is super aspirational, and I’m so inspired by their story of success and so I wanted to invest in them and help them on their journey to educating people of what real tequila is supposed to taste like.”

Ancer has proved to be a shrewd customer when it comes to business and has investments in several companies, including Black Quail apparel, a clothing brand, and Ombré Men skincare products, both of which were also co-founded by fellow Mexican Marquez.

Abraham Ancer’s bag man for the 2021 WGC-FedEx win was Benji Thompson and he has been by his side ever since.

Ancer’s caddie for the previous five years had been Dale Vallely, but at the start of 2021 he had to return to Canada because of an issue with his visa.

Ancer no longer has a deal with Callaway and as a result you would be hard pushed to find any golfer with a wider collection of club brands safely stashed in their golf bag.

At last season’s win at LIV Golf Hong Kong, Ancer went the way of a lot of pros who are not tied to a deal, preferring a Ping driver.

At 5ft 7in in height his choice was the Ping G430 LST driver (10.5-degrees) which has a more comfortable driver length for golfers who are not so tall.

There was a TaylorMade SIM2 Max 3-wood (15-degrees) with Project X Even Flow Riptide 70 6.5 TX shaft and a Callaway Rogue ST prototype 5-wood with an LA Golf Ozik TP shaft.

His hybrid was a Taylor Made Stealth 2 Plus Rescue (22-degrees) with Project X HZRDUS Smoke Black 90 6.5 TX shaft.

Ancer has been a long-term admirer of Miura TC-201 irons and carried the 5 to 9-iron with Mitsubishi MMT 105TX shafts.

On wedge duty was a Miura HB-10 (52-degree) and an Artisan Prototype (56-degree) both with True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue Black S400 shafts.

Selection of a 60-degree wedge has caused more of a problem and Ancer was seen to switch between three choices, another Artisan Prototype, a Cobra King Forged and a Vokey Design WedgeWorks, utilising the same True Temper shafts.

Ancer’s putter was an Odyssey White Hot No 5 Stroke Lab and his ball of choice was the Titleist Pro V1x.