After all, Ochoa won five straight junior world championships and then had two NCAA player of the year seasons at the University of Arizona.
"Lorena has opened doors and is blazing a trail for these young players," said Ian Gardner, director of the Mexican golf federation. "We've had more success in the past two or three years on an amateur level than almost ever before."
And the flood of media coverage devoted to Ochoa in Mexico is raising awareness of the sport.
"I remember when they told me I had to cover golf, I practically cried," said Juarez, who has followed Ochoa since 2000.
About eight Mexican reporters covered the sport then, he said, while more than 100 do today.
But Ochoa's reach extends beyond Mexico.
"Every time I go back home, I see more and more young players with great potential," LPGA golfer Virada Nirapathpongporn, 25, from Thailand, said in an e-mail. Ochoa's success "goes to show that golf can be played and mastered by anyone, from any country ... as long as they have that tremendous desire."
Ruffin Beckwith, director of Golf 20/20 at the World Golf Foundation, likens Ochoa to Palmer, who got golf out of the country club in the 1950s, causing thousands of public courses to be built across the United States.
Forty years later, U.S. golf is stalling, as fewer rounds are played and more courses are closing than opening, Beckwith said.
Ochoa could unwittingly reverse that trend, Beckwith suggested, drawing millions of Mexican-American fans who were too young or far away to remember four-time LPGA player of the year Nancy Lopez.
On manicured greens from Las Vegas to Florida, Ochoa connects most visibly with countrymen who also earn a living off the game, greeting groundskeepers, restaurant and construction workers, signing flags and programs, and hosting breakfasts just hours before tee time to thank them for their work.
To many, she embodies their own dreams and struggles to get ahead, at home and in the world.
"Mexicans are very proud of you," President Felipe Calderon told Ochoa at the 2007 LPGA Corona Championship in Morelia, Mexico. "Lorena represents the Mexico we long to see, a Mexico that refuses to be defeated, a Mexico that fights, a Mexico that opens ways in the world, a Mexico that wins."
