Campbell lives the dream

THE new champion looked at the trophy, tapped it, squeezed it and hugged it, as if he was trying to discover if this was for real or not.

Michael Campbell was ranked 80th in the world at the start of the week, had missed five successive cuts on the European Tour at the start of the year and he wouldn’t have been in Pinehurst at all last week were it not for the USGA decision to hold a qualifier in Britain. He scraped through at Walton Heath and today he is US Open champion.

“Ben Hogan has been my hero all my life,” he mused yesterday as he gazed in wonder at the piece of silver shining in his arms. “Look, there’s Palmer, there’s Nicklaus. My name is beside theirs. It’s unbelievable.”