It was the classic golfer’s gesture, a natural reaction to the euphoria of
winning, but the moment Michael Campbell threw his ball into the crowd at
Pinehurst, North Carolina, after winning the US Open in 2005, he regretted
it. This particular ball had a special significance - and not just because
he’d clinched the title with it.
“It started with the BMW PGA championship at Wentworth before the US Open,”
explains Campbell. “Just down the road from the course is a Porsche
dealership. So a month before the US Open I was driving past it with my
coach and we decided to stop and look inside. I was admiring this new
Porsche 997 and my coach said, ‘If you reach the top five at the PGA
championship you should buy yourself that car.’ In fact, I finished eighth.
So for the US Open I decided to write ‘997’ on my golf ball as an added
incentive - and it worked.”
The ball became Campbell’s talisman and he vowed never to lose it, until in
his moment of triumph he forgot. Even without 997, Campbell went on to win
the HSBC World Match Play championship that same year, bagging £1m in prize
money. He knew exactly what to do with the cash: “The Porsche cost about
£60,000 but by the time I’d finished tuning the engine up and everything
else it was £109,000. And my coach bought me the numberplate by way of extra
reward. It’s US05 PEN.” Campbell’s victory in the US Open, in which he held
off a late charge from Tiger Woods, was one of the biggest surprises in the
game’s history and he will be hoping to repeat the feat when he tees off at
Royal Birkdale in the Open next month. The fact that Woods underwent surgery
on his left knee last week and is expected to be out for the rest of the
season certainly won’t have done Campbell’s chances any harm.
“It will be quite different not to have Tiger,” he says. “He adds so much,
another dimension to every tournament he plays in. It’s a shame, but it
gives us more of a chance.”
Sitting in the clubhouse of the Royal Ashdown Forest golf course in East
Sussex, eating bacon sandwiches and drinking coffee, Campbell, or Cambo as
he is affectionately known, is not your typical golfer. For a start he is a
Maori New Zealander - about as rare a combination in golf as you are likely
to find. Back home, he says, rugby is the game you play and golf is for the
retired.
He began by caddying for his father, but quickly started playing himself -
despite the rudimentary nature of the courses.
“I started playing in a local course where you had to dodge sheep and climb
over electrified fences,” he says.
“On the first day at secondary school everyone had to stand up and say
something about themselves. All my classmates were saying that they wanted
to be firemen or rugby players. When I said that I wanted to be a
professional golfer everyone fell about laughing at me, and so from that day
on, I never told anyone I was playing golf.”
After school he took a job as a telecoms engineer but his mind kept drifting
towards distant fairways. “I’d take a sickie and then go off and play golf.
The problem was my boss would read about me playing a tournament in the
paper the next day - that guy hated me.”
He turned professional in 1993, shortly before his 24th birthday, and now
lives in Brighton with his wife Julie and their two young sons Tom and
Jordan. Although he also owns homes in New Zealand and Australia Campbell
insists he doesn’t miss his homeland. “I love driving my Porsche through
English country lanes - it’s a great way to relax, just man and machine.
Julie will ask me to pop out to shops and I’ll be gone for an hour,” he says
with a guilty smile. “Can be very slow, these Porsches.”
He is also something of a gadget freak. “Golfers have quite a lot of downtime,
so when we’re together we tend to talk gadgets,” Campbell says, before
launching into a passionate description of the state-of-the-art Bang &
Olufsen speakers he has set up at home and his new Swiss watch. “I also
don’t know what I’d do without my iPod. I do a lot of gym work and if you
spend an hour and a half in the gym you need your iPod to really go for it,”
he says. “I like to keep fit because as a golfer you need stamina and I also
want to keeping playing until I’m an old man.”
The most important gadget he leaves till last: a program on his iMac that
allows him to film his swing and send it by e-mail to his coach in the US so
that the two can discuss it as they watch it on their computers. “There’s a
split screen with me on one side and an image of an ideal swing on the
other. We compare them and he’ll give me advice; something like, ‘You’re
moving your right leg too soon.’ It’s amazing.”
Campbell is also introducing his own range of specialist golf clothing in
conjunction with Canterbury, the New Zealand manufacturing company, which,
he says, features contemporary versions of traditional Maori designs (visit
www.canterburynz.com to see for yourself).
However, if he is to make an impression at the Open he is going to need more
than a clever computer program and his own range of clothes. The past couple
of years have seen him struggle with form and so far this year he has found
himself way down the rankings in all the major championships. He remains
stoical, however, describing his recent run as a “drought”. “This game can
be cruel and I’ve suffered some injuries but I’m feeling really about
confident now,” he says.
Perhaps another car - to join the Porsche, the Mercedes SL 55 and the family
4x4 - might help. Or at least another lucky golf ball. Which reminds us:
whatever happened to 997?
“The fan who caught the ball got in touch with me afterwards via my website
and asked if I’d like it back.
“I said, ‘Yes, of course!’ It arrived in the post a few days later and so we
sent him a set of golf clubs to say thanks.”
My stuff...
On my iPod Black Eyed Peas and Bob Marley are current favourites In
my DVD player Pulp Fiction On my driveway A Porsche 997, right,
a Mercedes SL 55 and a BMW X5
I would never throw away Slingbox, a piece of technology that allows
me to watch overseas channels through the computer
