Though a Runner-Up to One of Golf's Great Cinderella Stories, Chad Campbell Has No Regrets
For every winner, there are 155 losers.
In three of the four majors, that is the result.
Twenty years ago at the PGA Championship at Oak Hill, Chad Campbell was one of those 155, but this loss was a little more difficult for the Texan to shake.
The 29-year-old had a front row seat to one of the most amazing shots in major championship history as Shaun Micheel hit a 175-yard 7-iron from the left rough that resulted in an all-time walk-off shot. The ball rolled to within inches of the cup.
The birdie doubled Micheel’s lead from one to two shots and gave the 169th-ranked player in the world his first and only victory on the PGA Tour.
“Obviously by the roars I knew it was pretty close, but I didn't realize it was you don't even have to think about it, it’s a tap-in,” Campbell said. “With those greens so severe, I mean, if it had been three foot above the hole, you never know what's going to happen.”
The 29-year-old Campbell had fired a nifty 5-under 65 in Saturday’s third round and moved from four shots behind halfway leader Micheel to a tie atop the leaderboard with Sunday remaining to determine the winner.
The fact that Campbell had spent more time on the Hooters Tour then the PGA Tour didn’t faze him, but he still started out poorly with a bogey to Micheel’s birdie after a wayward drive at the 1st hole.
The two-shot deficit early on would be too much to make up, but Campbell never lost confidence or faith over the remaining 17 holes.
Even after the defeat, Campbell moved on.
He thought about what could have been, but never dwelled on it.
“As far as it being a loss, I think I took it more of a more of a positive than anything,” Campbell said. “Positive, meaning that I felt like I played really good coming down the stretch, you know, in the highest situation possible in a major and just came up short and was happy that I didn't give him the tournament. He went out and won the golf tournament.
Oddly just weeks before the PGA, Sports Illustrated did a poll asking different questions of players and one was about players that will win majors and Campbell’s name came up.
Even 20 years later, Campbell remembered that poll and its results and took some solace from the fact that his peers believed in his game.
Unlike Micheel, Campbell would go on to win four times in his PGA Tour career, the first coming just three months later at the Tour Championship where he fired a ridiculous third-round 61 at Champions Golf Club in Houston and won by three.
The $3.9 million he made in earnings that year was Campbell’s career high and his move up to 14th in the world rankings was close to his best, as he would move to ninth halfway through the 2004 season after a runner-up finish at Colonial.
Campbell would have one other really good chance to win a major in the 2009 Masters, where he lost in a playoff to Angel Cabrera.
Campbell said that while they were both losses, the PGA and the Masters were totally different.
Getting into the playoff at Augusta was a gift when leader Kenny Perry bogeyed the last two holes and opened the door for Campbell and Cabrera.
Campbell bogeyed the first playoff hole and was done, leaving Cabrera and Perry to fight it out, and in the end Cabrera’s par on the second playoff hole was enough.
“Totally different with the PGA because we kind of battled all day long,” Campbell said. “That was 18 holes. It was kind of back and forth. And we both played some pretty good golf on a really tough golf course.”
Campbell is home this week in Colleyville, Texas, with just over a year to go before his 50th birthday and a stint on the PGA Tour Champions.
He has no regrets of a career that was successful by anyone’s measure, with $26.8 million in career earnings in an era where he fought Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson almost every week.
Micheel is at Oak Hill this week to play in his 20th PGA Championship, and even though he won 20 years ago, in some ways it’s hard to not to wonder if Campbell was the winner in the end.
“I'd just say I think that the guys that are on that trophy, they
played for their place in the game, their legacy, and I
suppose I played to keep my job,” Micheel said on Monday at Oak Hill. “I think that's really unfortunate. I look back, and I'm like, that's exactly the way I played. I played like every shot was life and death and every round and every year that either I was exempt or not. That just seemed to be what I was playing for."