The post GOLF’s Subpar: Will Gordon talks Cam Champ’s crazy power appeared first on Golf.

The post GOLF’s Subpar: Will Gordon talks Cam Champ’s crazy power appeared first on Golf.

Subpar’s Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz are joined by PGA Tour pro Will Gordon who shares just how impressive Cam Champ’s clubhead speed is.

The post GOLF’s Subpar: Will Gordon talks Cam Champ’s crazy power appeared first on Golf.

The post Shot Shaping: Fairway Finder appeared first on Golf.

The post Shot Shaping: Fairway Finder appeared first on Golf.

Camp Champ shows how to hit a very low drive off the tee to ensure accuracy.

The post Shot Shaping: Fairway Finder appeared first on Golf.

The post The 2019 Shippys: the best, worst, weirdest, funniest and craziest of 2019 in golf appeared first on Golf.

The post The 2019 Shippys: the best, worst, weirdest, funniest and craziest of 2019 in golf appeared first on Golf.

What a year it was for golf, from the sublime to the ridiculous. In fact, 2019 was so memorable it deserves its own set of awards, so we’ve created the annual Shippys. And the game will never be the same.

Content Creator of the Year

Matt Kuchar. The formerly bland veteran was a headline writer’s dream in 2019, and only nominally because Kuch had a career year between the ropes. The controversies were vast and varied, most memorably his stiffing of the caddie El Tucan (you can’t make this stuff up) after their victory together in Mexico. Throw in a couple of rules kerfuffles and a delicious non-gimme at the expense of Sergio Garcia at the Match Play and Kuchar was at the center of many of the year’s juiciest stories.

Honorable Mention: Phil Mickelson. Winning the Crosby Clambake at age 49 was nothing compared to the splash Phil the Thrill made by finally embracing social media. For decades Mickelson has been a preeminent smack-talker in practice rounds, locker rooms and press rooms, but he finally put it all out there for the world to see.

Antihero of the Year

Brooks Koepka. The World No. 1 has turned into Thanos in spikes, and not just because they share the same jawline. Koepka’s slog to world domination has been remarkably joyless, fueled by perceived minor grievances and open disdain for the “golf nerds” he counts as colleagues. Hey Brooks, you’ve made it to the mountaintop. Try to enjoy the view!

Honorable Mention: Sergio Garcia. No bunker, green or tee box was safe when El Niño unleashed his fury at, uh, well, we’re not really sure why he’s so angry all the time.

News

Brooks Koepka didn’t care what you thought in 2019 and it made golf better

Shot of the Year

Gary Woodland’s delicate pitch from the fringe front-right of Pebble’s 17th green to the back-left pin position. This deft up-and-down iced the U.S. Open and proved that Woodland is more than just a slugger.

Honorable Mentions: Tiger’s fairway bunker shot during the second round of the WGC-Mexico City, when he bent a 9-iron around a towering tree, uphill, into the wind, and spun his ball across the green for a kick-in birdie. Pure artistry. And Jennifer Kupcho’s sweeping draw with a hybrid on Augusta National’s 15th hole for the kick-in eagle that helped propel her to victory at the inaugural Augusta National Women’s Amateur, which was a home run thanks to her gutsy play and wondrous sportsmanship, and the mega-talent she vanquished: Maria Fassi.

Worst Shot of the Year

Rory McIlroy’s opening drive at the Open Championship, which hooked out-of-bounds, sending a shiver down the spine of the golf world. McIlroy’s 79-65 at Portrush was symbolic of a year during which he played a lot of great golf but, in this writer’s mind, struggled when it mattered most.

Most Unexpected Hog-on-Hog Violence

Razorback alum John Daly canceling Walmart, another Arkansas institution, on Twitter after complaining about “lazy” staff and how the store he visited had only one open checkout lane. Or maybe they just failed to provide a motorized cart?

Same here! 1 line open, lane 13 while 4 of them stood around talking telling us to self checkout! So, I self checked out with over 100 items just to have fun with it and tie those up too!

— John Daly (@PGA_JohnDaly) May 1, 2019

Putt of the Year

The 6-footer by Suzann Petterson on the final hole to win an epic Solheim Cup for Europe. It’s the kind of putt that even a golfing machine like Bernhard Langer found overwhelming, but Pettersen—a controversial captain’s pick because she had taken the preceding year off after giving birth—hearted it and then punctuated the moment with a mic-drop retirement announcement.

Honorable Mention: The walk-off winning putts on the 72nd holes by young guns Matt Wolff (for eagle!), Adam Long and Keith Mitchell.

Round of the Year

Shane Lowry’s Saturday 63 to seize control of the Open Championship. This electric performance was a monument to Lowry’s skill set: booming drives, creative shotmaking, deft touch around the greens and deadeye putting. The singing of the delirious fans from all corners of the Irish island that carried Lowry home was the most unforgettable soundtrack of the year.

Honorable Mentions: Haotong Li making four eagles during the second round of the Saudi International, and only one of them on a par 5! He holed two approaches on par 4s and then drove the green (and nearly aced) the downwind, 388-yard 17th hole. Also, McIlroy going out with the 54-hole lead at the Canadian Open and then stalking a 59 before settling for a 61 and a blowout win.

Most Unsettling P.R. Campaign

The inaugural playing of the Saudi International. While the Kingdom was engulfed in controversy over the murder of Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi, the European Tour blew into town with great fanfare, thus allowing many top players to scoop up huge appearance fees. Patrick Reed partook of an awkward photo op at an elementary school and Bryson DeChambeau went on TV to enthuse that the tournament was “amazing.” Guys, next time just be honest and say, We don’t care how violently oppressive the host country is as long as the check clears. Bonus points to McIlroy and Paul Casey for willfully boycotting the tournament.

News

Phil Mickelson commits to play controversial event in Saudi Arabia

Worst Damage Control

DeChambeau… again. He became the poster boy for the slow-play scourge after a Zapruder-like video surfaced of The Professor agonizing for more than two minutes to take (and miss badly) a routine 10-footer. Instead of begging for forgiveness, DeChambeau blamed his pace of play on other caddies for their slow walking. He then got into a war of words with, and then confronted, Koepka—a bad idea on both fronts; insisted that data proves he’s not a slow player, but failed to supply said data; posted a defiant video on Instagram pronouncing, “So screw all y’all haters, no big deal.” Apparently the one thing Bryson does quickly is burn up goodwill.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B1E2_Moh8Tx/?hl=en

Most Flaccid Controversy

Brandel Chamblee calling Koepka’s diet for a semi-nude photo shoot “the most reckless self-sabotage that I have ever seen of an athlete in his prime.” Chamblee’s turgid monologues make him must-watch TV, but this pronouncement, during Masters week, looked rather limp when Koepka nearly won the event and then took the PGA Championship a month later. Koepka posting on social media a photo of Chamblee wearing a clown’s nose was a chef’s kiss.

Best/Worst Trend in Golf

Twitter feuds. From Justin Thomas’s war of words with the USGA to Joel Dahmen saying Sung Kang “cheated” to various pros ripping DeChambeau for his pace of play—golf beefs have never before been so public. It’s undeniably entertaining for the rest of us but doesn’t exactly burnish the image of the gentlemen’s game.

#growthegame @USGA https://t.co/jc5E0Y7TjP

— Justin Thomas (@JustinThomas34) March 2, 2019

Most Uplifting Victory

Cam Champ at the Safeway Classic. After a year marred by injury and middling results, Champ produced an inspired performance as a tribute to his grandfather Mack, who taught him the game and had recently begun hospice care after battling lung cancer. The tearjerker restored Champ’s standing as a phenom but more importantly was a window into the soul of an otherwise buttoned-down competitor.

Honorable Mentions: Charles Howell’s victory at the RSM Classic, his first in nearly a dozen years, punctuated by his joyful embrace with his kids; and Nate Lashley’s win at the Rocket Mortgage Classic, 15 years after his parents and girlfriend died in a plane crash. Lashley’s victorious hug with his sister will long linger.

To receive GOLF’s all-new newsletters, subscribe for free here.

The post The 2019 Shippys: the best, worst, weirdest, funniest and craziest of 2019 in golf appeared first on Golf.

The post Wells Fargo Championship: Fantasy Drive appeared first on Golf.

The post Wells Fargo Championship: Fantasy Drive appeared first on Golf.

Fantasy Correspondent Jeff Eisenband has your locks of the week with Justin Rose highlighting his lineup and Cam Champ as a sleeper pick.

The post Wells Fargo Championship: Fantasy Drive appeared first on Golf.

The post Cameron Champ rocks one white, one black pair of shoes to commemorate Black History Month appeared first on Golf.

The post Cameron Champ rocks one white, one black pair of shoes to commemorate Black History Month appeared first on Golf.

In a move reminiscent of LeBron’s Nike “Equality” sneakers, Cameron Champ wore one black and one white golf shoe on Friday to commemorate the start of Black History Month during the second round of the Waste Management Phoenix Open.

“It’s the start of Black History Month so I thought I’d kick it off and support it,” Champ said. “With my interracial background, my dad’s side being African-American, my mom’s side being Caucasian, it’s something that means a lot to me and something I wanted to support.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/BtXL1o_gieH/

Champ, who called the decision last minute, was trying to decide what to toss to the fans at the famous 16^th hole when he realized the tournament coincided with the start of Black History Month.

“I was like, ‘We should do something for Black History Month,’” he said. “That’s why I’ve got the black shirt and white pants, too.”

He also posted to his Instagram, saying “I’m very proud of who I am and where I come from.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/BtXFGivF3K0/

Champ’s family is no stranger to racism — his grandfather, Mack, grew up in Texas during the 1940s where he served as a caddie at a public course, but was never allowed to play because of the color of his skin.

“We couldn’t play it. The golf courses, the hamburger stands, the restaurants, they didn’t allow blacks. The movie theaters had a section for blacks. We would have played, if we could.”

Despite joining the military and serving in Vietnam, Mack was still discriminated against at home. He was subject to arrest any time he stepped off base in Texas because he married a white woman, and interracial marriage was prohibited by Texas law at the time.

Decades later, Cameron Champ would become an All-American at Texas A&M, in the same town his grandfather was discriminated against.

Champ also said he would likely wear a Nike “Equality” hat today.

The post Cameron Champ rocks one white, one black pair of shoes to commemorate Black History Month appeared first on Golf.

The post Best male golfer at every age appeared first on Golf.

The post Best male golfer at every age appeared first on Golf.

We choose the single best male golfer at each age from 18 to 40 years old.

The post Best male golfer at every age appeared first on Golf.

The post ‘No. 1 is everyone’s goal’: PGA Tour young guns Cameron Champ, Sam Burns and Joaquin Niemann are aiming high appeared first on Golf.

The post ‘No. 1 is everyone’s goal’: PGA Tour young guns Cameron Champ, Sam Burns and Joaquin Niemann are aiming high appeared first on Golf.

“Is that the only breakable thing over there?” Niemann asks, pointing at a framed photograph just beyond the bin. No matter. From a super-tight lie on the carpet, he clips a spinning, low-flighted pitch that sails across the room, rattles off the back of his target and drops into the trash. Swish. Niemann feigns an uppercut fist pump as Sam Burns, standing nearby, shakes his head, laughing.

It’s a youthful moment in a scene filled with them — but that’s the idea. Burns, 22, and Niemann are waiting for another Tour young gun, Cameron Champ, 23, who’s lost somewhere on the Fairmont’s sprawling grounds. “No worries,” Burns says of the brief delay. “I’ve literally got nowhere to be.”

Life is good for these three. For Niemann, who earned his Tour card last summer after competing in just a handful of sponsor exemptions; for Burns, who stared down Tiger in the final round of last year’s Honda Classic; and for Champ, whose eye-popping power yielded his first Tour win, at the Sanderson Farms, just weeks before the Mayakoba.

Golf fans know the roll call when it comes to the PGA Tour’s young stars: Spieth, Thomas, Koepka, et al. But there’s young, and then there’s young. A new wave of stars is entering its first full year on Tour, and they’re here to win. Niemann, Burns and Champ are among those on the brink of Tour success — and all the changes that come with it. It’s why we’ve brought them together at a low-key, off-season Tour stop in this sun-soaked resort town: To chart their journey to this moment. To gauge where they’re going. And, of course, to find out who’s got the badder pickup truck.

Joaquin, let’s start with you.
Joaquin Niemann: Oh, no.

What is your first golf memory?
Niemann: A plastic golf club — I was swinging it around inside the house. I was two or three.
Sam Burns: You remember that? Two?
Niemann: No, but I have pictures.

How about you, Cam?
Cameron Champ: It’s about the same for me. I was two years old, my grandpa got me plastic clubs, and I went from there.
Burns: Mine was different. I have a brother who’s eight years older and a sister who’s nine years older. My first memory with a golf club is trying to chase my brother and hit him with it. You know how older siblings can be. But I’d go out to the golf course with him and my dad, and that’s how I got started.

When did you really get serious about the game?
Burns: I played a lot of sports growing up. Football, baseball — the big sports. Basketball, a little. Going into high school, I had to decide if I wanted to play golf or football, and I thought I’d have a better chance playing golf.
Niemann: I started playing a lot of soccer in school, but I also played golf. When I was 15 or 16, I switched to a small school, where you go from 8:00 to 11:00 in the morning, then you do what you want. I didn’t study anything. [Laughs] Just played golf.
Champ: It’s a progression. When you’re 12 to 16 years old, it’s really just about maturing as a player and, obviously, as a person, too.

Let’s go back to the start of 2018. None of you had your Tour card. What was the road map?
Burns [to Champ]: We played the final round of Q School together, right?
Champ: Yeah.
Burns: I remember on, like, hole… [Champ bursts out laughing.] You know what I’m talking about!
Champ: When you chipped in on the par 5?
Burns: Yeah, I chipped in the water! We were pretty for sure inside [the cut line], then I chipped it into the water on a par 5. Now I’m, like, one outside the cut line, but I went on to birdie the next five holes [and get Web.com status].
Champ: Great comeback.

Joaquin, you were able to secure your Tour card by earning enough FedEx Cup points in your sponsor exemptions — the same way Jordan Spieth and Jon Rahm had done it.
Niemann: Yeah, it felt pretty good. My goal at the beginning of [2018] was to get into the Web.com Tour finals by the seven invites I’d have on the PGA Tour. My first event went really well — I finished sixth. But I knew it was going to be really tough. 
I just kept thinking about the goal to get to the 
Web.com Tour finals and try to get my card from there. More events came and I kept playing good. Once I finished [T5] at the Greenbrier and secured my card, it was a really nice feeling.

Did you throw a party?
Niemann: Oh, nooo. I’m too young. [Laughs]

Is it a disappointment when the sponsor exemptions don’t work out the way you 
want? You know you’re going to earn 
seven exemptions into Tour events. How important is it to seize those opportunities?

Burns: I don’t know. Obviously, [without status] your starts are limited on the PGA Tour. You know that. You can feel a little added pressure. You’re trying to not think about it, but you know you have to perform in five to seven starts, whereas other guys are playing 30-35 events. I don’t know about Cameron, but for me it was great having the Web.com Tour as a consistent place to play. There are a lot of guys who come out of school and don’t make it through 
Q School and have no place to play. Knowing we had a secure spot every week was nice.
Champ: I’d definitely agree with that. It’s huge knowing you have a place to play for a year, to develop as a player coming out of college. Professional golf is a lot different than college and amateur golf. It’s two different worlds.

How so?
Champ: Everything. Travel…you’re by yourself…
Burns: The atmosphere of it.
Champ: And this is your career now. You’re not playing for your school, you’re playing for a lot more than that.

How about the Web.com Tour compared to the PGA Tour — what are the biggest differences?
Burns: I’d say everything is just magnified by 10.
Champ: Yeah.
Burns: The crowds. The golf courses are tougher.
Champ: Right.
Burns: You play well-known courses like Pebble and Torrey Pines. Also, growing up, you know so much about the PGA Tour. You watch these guys, and then you’re out here with them. That can be overwhelming.

Through all of this uncertainty 
before you finally get to the bigs, 
how do you stay confident?
Champ: Looking back on it, I think the Web.com Tour was a lot better for me and my preparation. It’s a year-long thing, so you get a full season under your belt. You deal with pressures.
Burns: It’s where I learned how to win.
Champ: Yeah, you learn how to win. Good momentum, bad momentum. Stuff like that. I think it helped me dramatically.
Burns: I agree. I was close to getting my card through the [exemption] starts, but I think it was kind of a blessing for me to not get it. At the time I didn’t think so, but looking back on it, having a year on the Web definitely helped me figure out who I was as a player — more than college or amateur golf.

This is starting to feel like a Web.com Tour ad. 
When did you feel like you made your first big
 splash — when the golf world at large took notice?
Burns: Mine has to be playing with Tiger in the final round of the Honda. [Burns bested Woods with a bogey-free 68.]
Niemann: I remember watching that.
Champ: Oh, yeah, I was watching that on TV.
Niemann: I was watching Tiger, not you. [Laughs]
Burns: Yeah, I just happened to be there, too. It was insane, just the whole atmosphere. How many people were watching. For me, I kind of felt like a fanboy at times, because I’d catch myself watching him. I’ve watched about every shot of his growing up. It was kind of surreal, like a dream at the time.

View this post on Instagram

What a day getting to tee it up with Tiger. Thank you everyone for your support! A day to remember for a lifetime. Thank you @thehondaclassicofficial for having me

A post shared by Sam Burns (@samburns66) on Feb 25, 2018 at 4:51pm PST

Did you sleep the night before?

Burns: I was definitely nervous leading up to it. But once we got out there, after a few holes, it’s kind of just another round of golf. I settled into 
it. He talked a lot. I was kind of surprised how much he shared with me. It was really cool.

What about you, Cam?
Champ: I’d say my splash was [the 2017 U.S. Open at] Erin Hills, because of what it led to. Just the experience alone helped my game rise.
Burns: Yeah, I was watching.
Niemann: I played Erin Hills, too, but missed the cut. I remember seeing you on the leaderboard.
Burns: You were, what, eighth going into that weekend?
Champ: Yeah. I played well the first two days; the last two I didn’t really play well.

How about your breakout, Joaquin?
Niemann: When I first turned pro, I wanted to know what it was going to feel like. I didn’t know if I was going to have a good week or not, but I played Valero [in 2018] and finished sixth. It would have to be that week.

Do you guys have mentors on Tour?
Niemann: I’ve been lucky. I’ve been hanging out a lot with Sergio. I’ve played a lot of practice rounds with him, including at the Masters. I don’t know if there are many things that mentors tell you to do that make you better, but Sergio told me to enjoy the game. Whatever you do, just enjoy it.
Burns: Yeah, they’ll definitely make you feel more comfortable, even if it’s as simple as where to go when you get to a place. You have no idea where registration is. You’re walking around a new club, you don’t even know where the range is, you don’t know where the putting green is. At times you can feel like you’re lost. I got here this week and I had no idea where to go. I was walking in circles.

Sam, would you say you have a Tour mentor?
Burns: I’ve relied a lot on David Toms. We’re from the same town and have been friends a while. I’m best friends with his son. Just asking him questions and being around him is helpful. Another example was last week: Webb Simpson had some of the rookies over for dinner. There’s little stuff like that. It’s no big deal for them, but for us it means a lot.

How about you, Cam?
Champ: Not really. As far as mentors go, they’re probably my coaches. Sean [Foley] — he’s smart in many ways. I think he’s helped me more mentally than with my swing. A lot of people think he’s just a swing coach, but he’s more than that.

Is there anyone you think your game compares to on the Tour?
Champ: I don’t, personally.
Burns: You grow up and play golf, and everyone is always trying to compare you to someone else. For us, we’re trying to make it our own way; to make ourselves unique.
Niemann: I agree with that.

Is that hard to do?
Burns: Yeah, they always want to compare you to someone else.
Champ: With media nowadays, they just want to stir things up at times. I just try to block it out now and not worry about it. I only worry about what means the most to me.

Do you guys read about yourselves?
Champ: I don’t very often.
Niemann: No, no, no.

How about social media? 
Do you read your mentions?
Champ: Not at all. Nothing.
Burns: It’s poison. Poison!
Champ: I mean, you’re always going to have 10 percent haters, and 90 percent likes, so what’s the point? When you look at those people [hating], most of them have two followers, so it doesn’t really mean much. [Laughs]

You’re a year into the Tour life. What’s 
been your favorite part of the experience?
Burns: There’s not a lot of guys out here [our age], so just to share these experiences with one another is pretty cool in my opinion.
Champ: I know a lot of guys who are not out here. A lot of them are very good players. For us to be able to do this, to be out here and have status… Sometimes I take that for granted, but when I put it in perspective it’s pretty cool stuff.
Burns: I mean, how many 19-year-olds are there on the PGA Tour? One?
Niemann: For one more day! [Niemann turned 20 the following day.]

You’ve each been successful at every level, but have there been moments of doubt along the way?
Burns: I think golf is always trying to do that to you; trying to get you to second-guess yourself. You have to be mentally strong to be out here. These are the best 125 players in the world. You’ve got to believe in what you’re doing.

What are you learning right now that you weren’t working through a year ago?
Niemann: When I was an amateur, I didn’t have a lot of weeks playing in a row. Now, I’m playing really often, so I have to be really careful not to practice too much. I have to try to be more consistent every week. You’ve got to figure out a way that works better for you every day.
Burns: You have to be more efficient with your time.
Champ: Extremely. I learned that one the hard way. The first few weeks on the Web.com Tour I really didn’t have a day off. I was just worn out, and I didn’t play too well. You have to find something that fits you: when to practice, when to rest…
Burns: When you go to the golf course, you’re going to do your work.
Champ: And then you get outta there.
Burns: Especially here, when it’s 212 degrees.

Cam, at the Sanderson Farms event, what did you learn about winning on the Tour level?
Burns: You don’t want to ask me that? [Laughs]
Champ: I felt like I proved that I was good enough. Obviously, I played really well, but I had a rough front nine on Sunday and gave back a four-stroke lead. But I learned to never give up, even when I had everything going in the opposite direction. Then I got on a run. Made a few clutch putts to cap it off.
Niemann: That was a pretty good birdie on 18, from under the trees.
Champ: I wasn’t trying to do that! I was trying to hit it into the bunker, but I remember saying, “If I pull this, it might be good,” and I pulled it.
Burns: Hits it to seven feet.
Champ: Pulled it just enough. [Laughs] I probably couldn’t do that shot again if you gave me 100 balls.

You win, and you get a huge payout: $792,000 to be exact. A year ago, you’re not even playing for money. How do you handle that change?
Champ: My team. I don’t make a decision without them knowing, whether it’s financially or anything in that category. Obviously, it’s nice, but it’s also overwhelming because a year ago I was still a college kid.
Burns: Yeah, I got $400 a month in college.

RELATED: HOW CAMERON CHAMP BECAME GOLF’S NEW ‘IT’ KID

Justin Thomas once told me he buys himself something whenever he wins. For his first win, it was a pair of suede slippers. Do you let yourself splurge when you play well?
Champ: A little bit, but I’m not buying suede slippers! [Laughs]
Burns: I bought a house, but I don’t know if that’s a splurge. It’s kind of essential to have a place to live. I haven’t really splurged, I guess. I bought a truck.
Niemann: You guys buy more trucks than cars. Where I come from, we buy more sports cars than trucks.

If it gets a little boring on the back nine of an event, broadcasters can start talking about Cam and Sam’s love of trucks.
Champ: Oh, yeah. I’ll say my truck’s faster than his.
Burns: Yeah, right! Don’t be lying.
Champ: My truck has 300 more horsepower than Sam’s!
Burns: Fake news.

All right, let’s finish with this. In the world golf ranking, you’re all about the same — 110 to 130 or so. That won’t be your peak, but do you think about your peak and, specifically, where you’re going in your career?
Burns: I do. If I wasn’t trying to get to No. 1 in the world, I’d be doing myself an injustice. If you’ve put this many years of work into something and aren’t trying to be the best at it, why even do it? I know these two guys both want to be No. 1 in the world.
Niemann: I’m always thinking about trying to be the best I can be every day. If one day I can become No. 1 in the world, it’ll be a dream come true. But I’m always trying to go day by day, and get better every time.
Champ: No. 1 is everyone’s goal, but as long as you’re trying to strive for it and get better, that basically will take care of everything else. Even Brooks [Koepka] was saying it: you dream about it, and it’s the most difficult thing — especially at this moment in golf, with so many good, quality players. But you gotta hit your ball and putt it.

The post ‘No. 1 is everyone’s goal’: PGA Tour young guns Cameron Champ, Sam Burns and Joaquin Niemann are aiming high appeared first on Golf.

The post Young Guns: The PGA Tour’s next crop of great players is already here appeared first on Golf.

The post Young Guns: The PGA Tour’s next crop of great players is already here appeared first on Golf.

Cameron Champ, Sam Burns and Joaquin Niemann have already arrived and have started scaring the veterans of the PGA Tour.

The post Young Guns: The PGA Tour’s next crop of great players is already here appeared first on Golf.

The post Family Man: Cameron Champ didn’t become golf’s new ‘it’ kid all by himself appeared first on Golf.

The post Family Man: Cameron Champ didn’t become golf’s new ‘it’ kid all by himself appeared first on Golf.

SEA ISLAND, Ga. — Whenever the kid swings a club, there are, in a manner of speaking, six hands on it. The kid’s. The father’s. The grandfather’s.

The third generation is Cameron Champ, 23, who holds his Ping clubs with an interlocking grip. Maybe you saw it, over the weekend, as he tried to win the RSM Classic on a course that could barely contain him. He makes a swing that is devoid of violence or recklessness that can fly a ball 360 or more yards in still, warm conditions. Easily. Cameron Champ, if you’re just catching up here, is the slender and sinewy Californian with Nike duds, a killer smile and cool demeanor, who won the Tour event in Mississippi a few weeks ago. That earned him a bronze rooster, a $792,000 check and a lot of attention. He came here, to this old and genteel Southern resort built on a former long-staple cotton plantation, looking for a win that would get him in the Masters.

The second pair of hands belongs to Jeff Champ, Cameron’s father. On Thursday afternoon, Champ had his cellphone in his right hand, hovering above a gallery rope here, because his son was playing with Davis Love III, of Sea Island and the World Golf Hall of Fame, and Jeff knew that if he didn’t get a snap of those two golfers shaking hands on the 18th green, who would? Jeff’s left hand is another story. It was once struck by an errant Randy Johnson pitch in an Instructional League game. Soon after, Jeff was out of baseball and back home in Sacramento, selling trophies and T-shirts and scrimping and saving — with his wife, Lisa — to support Camerons’s junior-golf habit.

The third pair of hands belong to Mack Champ, Cameron’s 77-year-old golf-nut grandfather, who, during the RSM event, was 2,700 miles away, in his one-story house in Sacramento. Mack, a widower and a retired Airman, had his eyes on the Golf Channel coverage, because when Cameron plays, he watches, though that may convey the wrong idea. Because if there’s anybody even remotely linked to the PGA Tour who knows there’s more to life than making the top 125, it’s Mack. The senior Champ grew up in the 1940s and ‘50s in greater Houston, where he had to place his dark hands against downtown drinking fountains marked COLORED when he wanted water.

Cameron Champ, Jeff Champ, Mack Champ. CHAMP. Some family name, right? The headline writes itself. Late on Sunday, Cameron Champ was knocking on the door. Golf Channel was going to a TV break and an announcer said, “Cam Champ, trying to be the champ.”

***

Even though Davis Love is 54 he still has speed in his swing, and he still drives it long and in play. Cameron Champ was hitting his bent 3-iron — a driving iron, really — even with Love and past him in the first two rounds. Champ’s bag, at the RSM Classic, went driver, strong 3-iron, strong 4-iron, weak 4-iron. He can dismantle a course with his long irons, but it’s the driver that grabs your attention. On any given hole, he can blow it 50 yards past many of his playing partners and you’ll see him drive it past Brooks Koepka and Tony Finau, too. In warm weather, on a long and wide hole where he won’t run out of fairway? Please.

And he does it with a normal-looking swing. Champ’s backswing is not crazy-long, as John Daly’s was, when he was the game’s country-strong golfer and new-guy crowd favorite. Champ doesn’t have a screaming lag move, as Sergio Garcia did when he first came on the scene. You know how Bubba Watson has those dancing feet after impact, and how Justin Thomas’s heels are high in the air when he says pow? Champ has none of that. He stays planted. He has a narrow stance, hits it low, fades a butter-knife fade. A funny thing is to see Champ, modest and unassuming by nature, keep walking and walking when the other guys are at their tee shots.

There have been other Cameron Champs, over the years. Rickie Fowler in 2010. Robert Gamez in 1990. Charles Howell III in 2001. Howell, who picked up his first title in 11 years at Sea Island on Sunday, remembers what it’s like, to stand on the range and have Curtis Strange checking out your move. “But [Champ] has 20 more miles of speed than I did,” Howell said. “And he can putt.”

Champ climbed into contention by having a solid Thursday, an excellent Friday and a solid Saturday. Champ’s shot-of-the-day on Thursday might surprise you. It was a downwind 60-yard pitch off a firm Bermuda-grass fairway with a hooded sand wedge. The shot was on a string, barely higher than the flagstick, landed and stopped just about dead, a yard or so from the hole. Champ was already long when he started working with Sean Foley eight years ago. (John Wood, Matt Kuchar’s caddie, who played baseball in Sacramento with Jeff Champ in the 1980s, was the Foley-Champ matchmaker.) You can’t teach speed. But other skills can be taught, that hooded wedge among them.

Foley and Champ talk on the phone most days. “It’s a big brother-little brother kind of thing,” Jeff said at Sea Island. They talk about full swings and half swings, pitching the ball out of Bermuda, out of poa annua, out of bent. Foley knows, and Champ is learning, that you have to make adjustments week in and week out, to make it on Tour. They also talk about how rounds and tournaments unfold and how practice sessions and careers unfold. They talk about things that have nothing to do with golf, not directly. All the while, the bond between them grows deeper.

“You have to manage your expectations,” Cameron said after his first round at Sea Island, talking about what he has learned so far in his PGA Tour career. (He’s played in 10 Tour events.) “There might never be another Tiger. Dustin Johnson has won, what, 19 times on Tour? And he’s played in over 200 events. [Actually 242.] Nobody wins every time they play. Right now, I’m working on playing four solid rounds every time I play. If I play four solid rounds, I can contend. I’d like to play in all four majors, play in the FedEx events, play at East Lake.”

The most experienced Tour player in the world wouldn’t challenge a word of that. When you’re talented and starting out and people are looking at you, it’s important to manage expectations. Because Champ is a young, promising, athletic, smart and handsome golfer from California, in Nike duds, and from a mixed-race unassuming family with a military strain in it, with a doting, baseball-playing father, people might start thinking crazy things. Don’t start thinking crazy things! Champ is good and likely getting better. What he says is undoubtedly correct: If he plays well for four straight days, he’s going to contend. If he contends enough, he’s going to win some of them.

The good teachers learn from their students. The good teachers have a compulsive need to share. The Foley-Champ relationship, Jeff Champ believes, is why Cameron knows more than your ordinary PGA Tour rookie. He’ll tell you that his son and Foley connect on every possible level.

“Who do you consider to be more black, you or Sean?” Champ was asked on Thursday, his workday long done. He and his father stayed in a private home last week, about 10 miles from the course, with friends of friends.

Champ, a bright, personable Texas A&M graduate, laughed and considered the question. He has one black grandparent. Foley, a white Canadian who lives in Orlando, went to a historically black school, Tennessee State University, and was a serious student of black culture even before he went there. Foley, who formerly taught Tiger Woods and is Justin Rose’s longtime teacher, has an abiding interest in black artists and writers and especially musicians.

“Technically speaking, me,” Champ said, taking on the tongue-in-cheek question. “Sean’s not mixed to any extent. But the way Sean is? You’d have to say Sean.” The kid was having fun.

On the course, Champ is all business. Love was struck by how reserved and quiet Cameron was as they played. Love’s son, Dru, also in the field, is 24 and gregarious. But even for people playing tournament golf for a living, how many hours a day are you actually on a course? Tour players have off-course lives and off-course histories, of course. Every last one of them. But Champ has a personal history that makes his path to the PGA Tour beyond unlikely. The length is one thing. The life and times of the man who nurtured him in the game is another thing all together.

***

Mack Ray Champ was born June 1, 1941, at home, in Texas, when separate and unequal was the way of the land. Cameron’s paternal grandfather attended segregated schools all his life. His people, the men among them, were sharecroppers and farmers. “My mother did domestic work for white people, like a lot of black women did,” Mack said last week. For most of his boyhood, Mac lived in country houses with no indoor plumbing or electricity. He had a brother who was killed in an unsolved murder.

Mack was given a new birthdate (June 5, 1941) and lost his middle name when he needed a legal document for the first time in his life. Turns out, the United States Air Force requires a birth certificate for its enlistees and Mack Champ had never had one. What Mack knows about his family’s history, and he knows a lot, he got from an aunt who died several years ago at 103.

His first exposure to golf came in the late 1940s, caddying at the nine-hole course in Columbus, Texas, with his brothers, banking 45 cents a loop. “It’s still there today, off I-10,” Mack said of the course. “We couldn’t play it. The golf courses, the hamburger stands, the restaurants, they didn’t allow blacks. The movie theaters had a section for blacks. We would have played, if we could.”

Mack first saw professional golf on a neighbor’s black-and-white TV in the late 1950s, and remembers being drawn to Arnold Palmer’s brawn and style. He didn’t actually play golf until he found himself stationed in Europe and England, courtesy of the Air Force, in the early 1960s.

“There was a driving range on the base for our recreation. I said, ‘I don’t have no clubs.’ They said, ‘You can use these clubs.’ You could hit a hundred balls, all the balls you wanted. I practiced and practiced. My first full 18-hole round, with a scorecard, was on a tight course called Windy Acres on the North Sea. June 1965. I knew the rules and the etiquette. I shot 132. I was so happy. I had the bug. I was gonna get better. I bought Sam Snead’s Natural Golf. In September 1967, I had my first hole-in-one. Spalding sent me a certificate and whiskey glasses. I still got ‘em. I’m gonna give all that stuff to Cameron.” How the kid is going to play his grandfather’s 8-track tapes of Arnold Palmer’s swing is a problem for another day.

This next part of the Champ family life story is inadequate but at least it’s a start. Mack and his white, European-born wife, Lulu, first returned to the United States from a U.S. Air Force base in England in the mid-1960s. They lived on a base in Texas. Within that federal facility, their interracial marriage was recognized. The couple got second looks, but the marriage was accepted, at least legally.

“But the moment I walked off that base, I was subject to arrest,” Mack said. He tells the stories of his life with the relaxed ease that comes with age and years. He tells them like a teacher. Mack was subject to arrest because Texas law at the time prohibited interracial marriage.

Their son Jeff was born in 1967, the year the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could not reject marriage-license applications on the basis of race. The Champs moved to Sacramento in part because they felt Californians would be more open to their marriage. Jeff, a natural athlete in every season who was sometimes mistaken for being a Pacific Islander, went to a large, integrated public high school in Sacramento in the 1980s. It was nothing like the tiny all-black high school his father had attended in Texas in the 1950s, and nothing like the charter school Cameron attended in Sacramento just a half-decade or so ago.

The only sport Jeff didn’t play was golf. Mack was the golfer in the family, able to break 80 wherever he played, and sometimes 70. Today, Mack is a beloved figure in the Sacramento public-golf community. It was on those public courses, and later a few private ones, where Cameron, guided by Mack, learned to play. Mack teaches golf in Sacramento’s well-developed First Tee programs, in which Cameron and his kid sister, Madison, came up. Mack is particularly devoted to a First Tee program for young golfers with autism, like Madison, and other disabilities. John Wood has known Mack since he was a little kid. “The man’s special,” he said last week.

“Madison is a hell of a golfer!” Mack said of Cameron’s sister, two years younger than Cam. The grandfather is a full-volume talker. “She can hit that ball, and she could putt for her brother.” On tournament Sundays — you could see this in the Sea Island event — Cameron wears a blue shirt, as a public nod to the Autism Speaks movement, which wraps itself in blue as the breast-cancer research movement uses pink. Madison, who has significant struggles in communication but uses text messaging effectively, does things her own way. She has an aversion to big-headed metal drivers, so she hits a small wood-headed driver instead. Maybe it’s a Champ family thing. Her grandfather still plays with his old Ping Eye-2s. Karsten Solheim, the designer of that club, said years ago that his company never made a better iron.

You may also like These three pictures explain why Cameron Champ drives the ball so insanely far

Jeff played college baseball at San Diego State and was drafted by the Baltimore Orioles as a catcher with a pure stroke. He played two years of low-level professional ball, came home and married a single mother with two children. Lisa and Jeff then had Cameron and Madison. Their small family business — selling trophies, team uniforms and T-shirts — never left the family anything close to flush. Cameron grew up in a three-bedroom rental home where his parents and sister still live today. Cameron lives with friends in San Antonio. When he goes home to Sacramento for Thanksgiving this week, he’ll be back in his childhood bedroom, frozen in time.

Mack introduced Cameron to golf as a toddler swinging plastic clubs. Grandfather picked up grandson after the final bell all through Cameron’s school years, to take him to courses where they would chip and putt, hit balls and play nine holes. “He’d wear me out,” Mack said. “I’d say, ‘I’m tired, I got to go home.’ And he’d start crying.”

Mack and Lulu owned a one-story house with an extensive garden and a massive oak. “Cameron would hit balls over the house, back and forth. He’d hit it through the limbs of that tree,” Mack said. “I was his teacher until he was about 11. A lot of time, he’d overthink things. I’d tell him that you just had to be natural, like Sam Snead. Whatever the shot calls for, you hit that shot. If you do it right 70 percent of the time, you’re going to have a pretty good score. I made it fun for him.

“Now he has a game that’s foreign to me. They say on Golf Channel that you got to be able to explain your swing but sometimes you can’t. The speed Cameron has, no teacher could teach it. I’m not a physicist, but I can tell you that.”

One of the things that most pleases Mack about his pro-golfer grandson “is his desire to give back.” The family has started a charity — the Cameron Champ Foundation — which plans to manage the par-3 Foothills Golf Course in Sacramento, where Cameron and Mack played hundreds of times. “What Cameron and his dad are going to do is to create opportunities. There are kids in gangs, kids with no hope, and we want to try to get them into golf. Cameron knows that if people didn’t give to him, he wouldn’t be where he is.”

John Wood is surely correct: Mack Ray Champ — he still uses his middle name even if his birth certificate does not — is a special man.

Mack was asked last week where the family name comes from, the one that seems so perfect for his nothing-but-promise grandson.

“It comes from Virginia,” he said quietly. “It’s a slave name.”

***

Wednesday at Sea Island was nasty, cold and windy. Cameron was playing in the afternoon in an 18-hole pro-am with three BMW executives. Jeff followed them for nine holes before calling it a day. On his way into the warm, plush clubhouse, dripping with Southern charm, Jeff met Love, the tournament host. Love was wearing a camouflage vest with an embroidered polo horse on it, Ralph Lauren’s iconic logo.

“I’m looking forward to playing with your son,” Love said. He’s three years older than Jeff. “I’m not looking forward to seeing him outdrive me by 50.” Love, like his namesake father, a longtime Sea Island teaching pro, has a knack for saying the right thing.

Jeff looked like he’d been having these kinds of conversations all his life. You would never have known how new he was to it all. It was just 15 months ago that Cameron Champ was the unknown kid paired with Steph Curry in that first Web.com event. Nobody was paying particular attention to Cameron that day, except maybe Curry. Jeff talked hoops and golf that week with the Warriors star. Steph Curry! “One of the most famous athletes in the world,” Jeff noted. Golf can take you to amazing places.

“I don’t know how this pairing came about — I had nothing to do with it,” Love said. The threesome’s third was Patton Kizzire, a Sea Island resident and a native of Montgomery, Ala. “Maybe it was a TV thing. TV gets to make, like, one or two pairings a week,” Love said. There are few players who know more about the inner workings of the Tour than Davis Love.

In short order, hanging out near the clubhouse, Jeff met Kizzire and Davis’s daughter, Lexie, and granddaughter, Eloise. Jeff was now behind the curtains, seeing the other side of daily life on Tour, a life that’s hanging on by life support in this age of hype and rush and social media. It was a moment that reminded you that the Tour is, or can be, more of a caravan than anything else, and not just 150 independent player-CEOs, jetting in and out as it suits them. The Sea Island Golf Club abuts a private airport, with all manner of planes coming and going. Jeff, the son of a retired Air Force master sergeant, noted the size of an incoming jet. It was an elegant sight, if you’re into that sort of thing.

You may also like #AskAlan: Who wins more in 2019 — Tiger Woods or Cam Champ?

In the plush comfort of the clubhouse — the gas fireplace was going full blast — Jeff talked about the impact Wood made on Cameron’s development, when the caddie, then working for Hunter Mahan, connected Cameron with Foley. Jeff talked about his family cars, a 2006 and a 2012 with more than 350,000 miles on them, all in, and the sacrifices the family made to get Cameron to junior tournaments and everything that goes with that.

He showed the logo that a friend was developing for branding purposes, a capital C artfully containing a smaller one within it. He detailed, by way of an hours-in-the-day analysis, how much more time Cameron had to practice and play each afternoon after he and Lisa took their son out of his public high school and had him home-schooled in a program linked to a bricks-and-mortar charter school. According to the father, Cameron was an excellent student.

Jeff described, movingly, how he and Lisa were a team and that both their children had special needs, albeit in different ways. (In a separate interview, Cameron talked about how he knows one day responsibility for his sister will likely fall to him, and that he is ready for it. Jordan Spieth has surely had similar conversations, as has Samantha Els, Ernie and Liesl’s daughter. Jordan’s sister, Ellie, and Samantha’s brother, Ben, both have profound developmental issues.)

Jeff described his admiration for both his late mother and his father and what they had endured in the name of love and marriage. He explained how Cameron found his own way to Texas A&M, in College Station, without knowing the story of how his grandfather, as a 19-year-old Airman, was once refused at a hamburger stand there. Jeff explained the process by which he and Cameron selected Chris Armstrong of Wasserman to represent the young golfer. It is a coincidence, Champ said, that Armstrong represents Foley as well.

Then Jeff made a map of his Sacramento neighborhood, indicating with a pencil the streets Cameron was not allowed to cross. “We have a good neighborhood,” Jeff said. Nearby areas worried him. He recalled Cameron’s first experience playing playground basketball at Robert Frost Park, near their home and on the edge of where gang activity, drug sales and gun violence can occur on any given day.

“All right,” father said to son, as Jeff recalled it. “You can go there. Take your bike. I’m gonna come down later to check it out. Don’t tell anybody I’m your father. I just want to see it for myself.” He saw that the quality of the basketball was high, and that his son was handling himself just fine, in every way.

Jeff talked about his hope that Cameron would earn a spot in next year’s Masters. His win at the Sanderson Farms event, which was played opposite a WGC event, did not grant him an automatic invitation.

“I’ve been invited to go to the Masters before, but I never went,” Jeff said. “We always said, we’ll go when Cam’s playing in the tournament and not before. Man, do I look forward to that, my father and Cam and me walking Magnolia Road.” If Jeff ever gets there, the Champs ever get there, he may be surprised to see how short and narrow Magnolia Lane actually is. It is beautiful, once you get off Washington Road and past the front gate.

***

If dank had a color that was the Sea Island sky when Cameron finished his Wednesday pro-am round. He called his father and they arranged to meet at their tournament courtesy car in the player parking lot. Cameron came out carrying a bag of chips and a bottle of Coke, the vin ordinaire of Sea Island. Off they went, to Chipotle, for dinner, Cameron still in his workday rain pants, tired but with no signs of crankiness. The son drove the big shiny white BMW courtesy car. “I trust him with this car,” Jeff said. The old rides at home, he said, they were another matter, requiring as they do a tender touch.

The first-round weather was no better and on his first hole Cameron made a double-bogey 6 with a second-shot sand wedge from the middle of the fairway. But he also made three birdies and an eagle before that nine was over. By the turn, the Love-Champ-Kizzire gallery had swelled to maybe 20 people. There’s no significant population base near Sea Island, golf will never have another Tiger Woods, and November means football and hunting throughout the South. It’s a mellow event.

Champ plays with an both intensity and ease. It’s an unusual combination. He doesn’t have the Cadillac Walk you might associate with Rory McIlroy or Dustin Johnson. Nothing like it. When his drives are a half football-field ahead of his partners, he slips along in the rough, to keep play moving and to start thinking about his shot. He plays fast, though not excessively so, and at one point on Thursday laughed to himself after hitting a pull-hooked downwind wedge that somehow stayed on the green. After a flared drive that still went 320, he stood on the tee alone for a long moment and made phantom swings at his still-standing tee. His caddie, Kurt Kowaluk, is a tall, athletic and bearded Canadian, and a good player, who was introduced to Cameron by Foley. They talk before every shot, but only briefly. They’re chill.

Really, except for the astonishing speed of his downswing, and the story of his road to the Tour, there’s not that much that separates Champ from other promising young players. The first difference of course explains his length. The second explains him. Asked if he could summarize what he had learned from his grandfather in a sentence, Cameron said, “It’s his famous quote: ‘It’s not where you start that matters, it’s where you finish.’”

On Friday at Sea Island, on a sunny and cool day, Champ shot a second-round 63 and finished the day in a tie for second place. His Saturday 66 got him in Sunday’s final group. He was tied for the lead early in the back nine but shot even for his final nine, for a 69 that left him in sixth place, three shots out of the Patrick Rodgers-Charlie Howell playoff. Howell won the playoff, for his third Tour win. The former it boy.

The Sea Island tournament marked the end of the Tour’s fall season. It also meant that Champ was the winner of a fall Tour program called RSM Birdies for Love. That means his foundation will get a $300,000 donation from RSM.

“This contribution is huge,” Champ said Sunday night. “We’re kind of just getting my foundation going, the Cameron Champ Foundation, mostly targeting minorities in my community who don’t have the advantages that I received as a kid.”

Soon after, Champ and his father got back in their wheels-for-the-week, the white BMW, and headed off, away from the old Retreat Plantation on which the resort was built.

Off the 1st tee of the Seaside Course is a small, bucolic cemetery, where Retreat Plantation slaves, and their descendants, are buried. Earlier in the week, Jeff had visited the graves, taken it in, read the tombstones. One plaque there describes how a slave named Neptune Small followed his “master,” Henry Lord Page King, to Confederate battlefields as King’s “body-servant,” retrieving King’s lifeless body from one of them. Neptune had no known surname at birth. He took the surname Small after emancipation.

All week long, Jeff and Cameron Champ, in their BMW, drove by the plantation burial ground on their way out, aware that it was there, but thinking about far different things.

Michael Bamberger may be reached at mbamberger0224@aol.com

The post Family Man: Cameron Champ didn’t become golf’s new ‘it’ kid all by himself appeared first on Golf.

The post RSM Classic betting odds: Favorites and underdogs at Sea Island appeared first on Golf.

The post RSM Classic betting odds: Favorites and underdogs at Sea Island appeared first on Golf.

The PGA Tour heads to Sea Island, Georgia this week for the 2018 RSM Classic. Although some of the world’s top players are skipping the event, there’s plenty of intrigue in this week’s competition. Webb Simpson enters as the betting favorite, coming off a strong stretch that has seen him post seven top-25s in his last 10 starts as well as a strong Ryder Cup showing.

Simpson has also had plenty of success at the RSM Classic in the past; 19 of his 22 rounds at Sea Island Golf Club have been under par. At No. 20, he is the top-ranked player in the field.

Rising star Cam Champ highlights those in the secondary group. Champ is coming off three consecutive top 10 finishes including a win at the Sanderson Farms Championship.

Here are the complete betting odds, via golfodds.com.

RSM Classic: Odds to Win

The post RSM Classic betting odds: Favorites and underdogs at Sea Island appeared first on Golf.