One week the PGA Tour winner was Ludvig Aberg, a Swede so supremely talented that he played in a Ryder Cup before his first major, entered the top 10 in the world ranking just nine months after he left college and has been there ever since.
The next week it was Brian Campbell, a 31-year-old who averaged $7,999 for the 186 tournaments he played over the last decade — one full year on the PGA Tour, the rest on the Korn Ferry Tour — before winning the Mexico Open. That was worth $1,260,000.
Golf needs them both.
Stars are what fuel interest. The PGA Tour gets a boost from these 72-man signature events with $20 million purses because they tend to deliver big names and often big moments. Scottie Scheffler has won four of them over the last two years. Rory McIlroy has won twice.
There also has been some discussion over the last 25 years — dating to the World Golf Championships — that smaller fields make it easier to win no matter how stacked they are. But the signature events have not disappointed.
Campbell, however, was a reminder that anyone can win on any given week. He had never won, not in his short time on the PGA Tour or what seemed like an eternity on the Korn Ferry Tour. That’s one of the great charms about golf and always will be.
His victory also showed those longshot moments still exist, even as the PGA Tour moves to reduce the number of full cards from 125 to 100 this year, and starts reducing the size of fields next year, including the elimination of some Monday qualifiers.
Yes, the numbers are shrinking, but the opportunity is there.
Meritocracy has not left the building.
Campbell had a career season on the Korn Ferry Tour last year with three runner-up finishes to finish No. 8 on the points list and earn a ticket back to the big leagues. That gave him access to tournaments like the Mexico Open, where the final hour was no less compelling than when Aberg tracked down Maverick McNealy at Torrey Pines.
An otherwise sleepy week at the Mexico Open — only two players from the top 30, four from the top 50 in the world — produced a duel over the final hour that was fun to watch considering what was at stake.
There was Aldrich Potgieter, full of promise and power, a 20-year-old South African who won the British Amateur at the age of 17 and last year became the youngest Korn Ferry Tour winner. He’s only getting started, and he simply smashes it off the tee.
Potgieter led the field at Vidanta Vallarta by averaging 324.7 yards for all his measured drives, nine of them at 350 yards or longer.
Campbell couldn’t keep up with that — he was on average 39 yards shorter off the tee — and he didn’t try. He spent the weekend alongside Potgieter and never flinched. He played with what he had, and it was enough.
Both felt the nerves of trying to win their first PGA Tour title.
“I thought I was going to throw up at multiple times during the day,” Campbell said.
“Pressure is a big thing. You can’t really beat it, you just have to learn and adjust to it next time you’re in this position,” Potgieter said.
The playoff was as fickle as golf gets. Potgieter twice pounded drives into the fairway on the par-5 18th holes, leaving him only a 6-iron to the green. Both times he could only manage par.
Campbell pushed his drive so badly on the second playoff hole that it was sailing out-of-bounds until it crashed into the trees and caromed back into play. He was on hardpan, 94 yards behind Potgieter. He ripped a 3-wood back into position and hit lob wedge 3 1/2 feet from the hole.
Potgieter missed his birdie putt from 6 feet. Campbell made his for the win, and the shock of it all didn’t wear off for some time, especially after his girlfriend, Kelsi, just about tackled him on the 18th green and he swung her around in pure joy.
“I’m literally freaking out on the inside,” Campbell told NBC when he regained his footing. “I have no idea what’s going on.”
Here’s what is going on. Campbell is headed to The Players Championship to compete for a $25 million purse. Then he has the Masters, and the PGA Championship. Along the way, he’ll be in five of the $20 million signature events left on the PGA Tour schedule.
Everyone expects Aberg or McIlroy or Scheffler or a dozen other stars to win. Not many knew anything about Campbell, who became a PGA Tour footnote as the last person assessed a penalty for slow play for two bad times in 2017 in New Orleans.
(That was a weird one, the first year the Zurich Classic went to two-man teams. Campbell and teammate Miguel Angel Carballo each got a bad time, and because it was foursomes, they counted as one competitor).
Now he’s a PGA Tour winner, a feel-good story, just like Rafael Campos last year when he arrived in Bermuda two hours before his tee time because his wife had just given birth to their first child. In danger of losing his card, he won for the first time.
They don’t move the needle. That doesn’t mean there’s no room for them in this sport.
The PGA Tour hopes to be stronger by rewarding the top performers and by reducing jobs and field sizes. That’s harsh for those who don’t make it, but they have no excuses as long as they have a tee time — whether that’s in signature events, regular events or opposite-field events, or even if they have to go back to the Korn Ferry Tour or Q-school.
No one ever wants to hear the solution is to play better, either because they have heard it for too long or they know it’s true.
A leaner tour — fewer cards, smaller fields — eliminates those who don’t perform. That was Campbell in 2017 and for the next seven years in the minor leagues.
And now he’s going to the Masters.
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On The Fringe analyzes the biggest topics in golf during the season. AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf
