He was already among the most shocking winners of the PGA Tour season.
Now he’s definitely the most shocking two-time winner.
Brian Campbell is the shortest hitter on the PGA Tour — he ranks 171st out of 171 players and has the slowest ball speed. He entered the week with just one top-30 finish this season — his win at the Mexico Open. It has been a decade since his Tour debut — and he’s spent most of that decade on the Korn Ferry Tour. He’s battled injury, doubt, more injury, more doubt. His results over the last month have been MC-WD-MC. Nobody saw this win coming because not even Campbell saw it coming.
“I have no words,” Campbell said. “I mean, to be, let alone in a playoff, and to finish it off this way, it’s just been amazing.”
Brian Campbell wins John Deere Classic
It was poetic that Sunday’s win came 10 years to the day after the 32-year-old from Newport Beach, Calif. first teed it up on Tour, as an amateur from the nearby University of Illinois playing on a sponsor’s exemption at the John Deere Classic. A decade later, he’s a two-time champ on a list with Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy as one of six multiple Tour winners this season.
In his post-round press conference, Campbell pinpointed a moment where the entire trajectory of his pro golf future hung in the balance.
“I’ve worked my entire life to be in this position, but unfortunately we had a couple years there where it wasn’t looking so good,” he said. “You have to start thinking about am I going do something else. Maybe pro golf or this route is not going to work out.
“But it was at second stage Q-School about two, three years ago. I made like a quintuple bogey on a par-3 and I thought my career was over in that moment. That night just kind of had a talk with myself. Said, you know what, whatever happens is okay. Trust yourself. The next round I went out there and shot 8-under and got myself right back in there.
“I guess I was like, maybe golf is not over for me. That moment was when everything changed.”
And now everything has changed again. Campbell began Sunday’s final round one shot off the lead of Davis Thompson. He picked off a birdie at the par-5 2nd, then the par-4 6th, then three more at 10, 11 and 13. A miscue off the tee at No. 15 led to a double bogey that seemed to doom his chances, but a terrific approach at the par-5 17th set up a two-putt birdie that landed him on 18 under par, a number that got him into a playoff with Emiliano Grillo. One par later, he was the champ.
In an emotional post-round interview with CBS’ Amanda Balionis, Campbell was asked about his long road back to the Tour after seven years toiling in the minor leagues. What would he tell his younger self about the shiny future ahead?
“Oh man, the advice I would give is just you really got to dig deep and trust yourself,” he said. “It’s easier said than done, but what worked for me a lot was trusting a lot of things I used to do when I was a kid. Getting back to enjoying the game and loving the game for what it is and just having fun with it.”
That can be a virtuous cycle, of course — it’s easier to enjoy the game when you’re playing well and when you’re winning and when you’re assured of future opportunities. But Campbell’s form after his first victory didn’t exactly reveal that this was coming; he made just five of 12 cuts and his best result was T32.
“After your first win I would say there is a lot of expectations that come about. Unfortunately I dealt with a lot of random sicknesses that hit me and pulled me out of a few tournaments I really wanted to play,” he said. “Even more so, I just really had to trust what I had been doing before, and, man, now we’re here. It’s just wild.”
As World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler likes to say, they start again at zero every week. This week, Campbell took fewer shots than anyone else.
Again.
