Campbell’s sensational season
There are those who will belittle his achievement because there wasn't a single American in the field and none from the top four in the world. There will also be many who believe handing out £1m for four days of golf is a sacrilege. There is merit in both points of view and much for the ultra-generous sponsors to ponder.
At the moment, there is every indication that the Match Play Championship will take place in the week before the Ryder Cup next year. HSBC would fancy that because it might tempt the likes of Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson to take part. The European players are against the idea because they believe the Wentworth week is exhausting and would leave them in poor mental and physical shape to cope with the special demands imposed by the Ryder Cup.
Even though he personally couldn't care less either way, Campbell had one word to describe playing 170 holes in four days as he did last week "ridiculous." Maybe so, but when you're earning that kind of money, a little inconvenience should be acceptable! In any case, this has been a sensational season for the Kiwi who laughs when asked if he could have envisaged at the beginning of the year that he would capture the US Open and win a record first prize cheque of £1m in the World Match Play.
"Obviously, I'm financially set for my family and myself so competing and winning tournaments around the world is the mojo," he said.
"Winning is great and that's why we play the game. I'm a big Ben Hogan fan and I recall seeing pictures of Ben holding the US Open trophy and now here am I with the same trophy. We play for the honour of being part of history."
Compare that sense of pride with the desolation surrounding his final victim Paul McGinley on Sunday evening. He sat there grim-faced accepting that the pressure had got to him at the 15th and 16th holes. The pain was absolute as he agreed: "It hurts a lot, especially as I was the leading player over the first three days. But that counted for nothing because it was match play. That's why match play is exciting, you wipe the slate clean and start off another day."
McGinley, who is now a career best 29th in the world rankings after his Wentworth exploits, also paid due tribute to Campbell, describing the way he is now playing as compared with earlier in the season when he missed five successive cuts as "easy as chopping cheese."
And yet, the New Zealender was there for the taking because he didn't bring his 'A' game to the table on Sunday and McGinley knows that. Indeed, had Campbell's second shot to the 12th not stayed inches within bounds, it could well have been a different story, a point Campbell readily accepted.
"That was a huge turnaround," he said. "There he was in the bunker and I pulled my four iron 220 yards and it was literally a foot from out of bounds. Luckily again, I had a good angle to get at my chip. Another foot and I was o.b. and it could have been a two-hole swing. But, look, it was a very tense and great tussle with Paul. He's a wonderful iron player and a great putter. He had a lot of chances out there and fortunately enough, it went my way and that's the bottom line. It could have gone Paul's way easily. It was like a knife edge really."
Campbell believes one of the reasons the Americans didn't come was the requirement to play 36 holes each day for four days. He doesn't, of course, agree with them and went so far as to stress that "the cream definitely rises to the top over 36 holes. Ernie [Els] won six times and he's a really fit guy but he didn't have to play the first round.
"He had a huge advantage being defending champion and number one seed. The four guys who didn't play the first round had a 36 hole rest day. Now all of the twelve play each day and this is the format we want although it's one that keeps a lot of players away. But, you know, players complain.
"They complain when they lose in the other World Match Play over 18 holes and they complain when they have to play over 36 holes here. Tiger has been knocked out by a lesser player over 18 holes so many times now and then the TV ratings go down because Tiger is not playing. You can't please everybody out here.
"I feel this is one tournament that should be recognised by the players. It's got some wonderful champions on the trophy and a great history behind it and we play for a million pounds. All of that equates to a wonderful golf tournament in my mind but not in others."
Campbell signed off by saying he hadn't even thought about the President's Cup apart from asking his Rest of the World captain Gary Player for a rest day today because he was only leaving for the States on yesterday's 8am flight.
As for the deflated McGinley, reluctantly or not he had to turn his attentions to the Seve Trophy starting in Northumberland on Thursday.
You suspected he could well do without what some see as a distraction, especially with the Dunhill Links and American Express Championships looming in the following weeks. As Paul readily admitted on Sunday, "the money doesn't matter" although he stressed he had no intention of withdrawing. Nor, I suspect, would he turn his nose up at the €125,000 that goes to each member of the winning team with €75,000 guaranteed to the losers!
More importantly, he now has to recover from his two failures at Wentworth and take to heart his own honest admission that "it is quite obvious I hit bad shots under pressure. That's what people will say. If I was looking in from the outside, I would say the same thing. If I'm going to win big tournaments, I can't finish the way I did at Wentworth. I bogeyed 15 and 16.
There's no getting away from the fact. Maybe I could hide behind the fact that he got lucky at 12 and 15 but I'm not going to do that. The bottom line is that I forced the errors. He got away with making pars and winning holes and that's not good enough at this level. I'm bitterly disappointed with myself. Everybody is saying hard luck but I'd prefer them to say nothing rather than hard luck."
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
