Cameron Champ: Emotional Safeway Open victory one of golf’s best
Cameron Champ held on to win the 2019 Safeway Open in one of the most emotional moments in recent memory.
Eleven months ago, Cameron Champ announced his arrival on the PGA Tour with his victory at the Sanderson Farms Championship. Less than a year later, he provided a moment which will last a lifetime, holding on to win the Safeway Open with his family close by.
Early on, it appeared as though Champ was set for a leisurely victory stroll at Silverado, but what was once a five-stroke lead disappeared as the day went on, and a bogey on No. 17 sent the 24-year-old to the final hole tied with Canada’s Adam Hadwin atop the leaderboard.
With a par-5 finishing hole ahead of him, Champ attacked it as we’ve already come to expect of the budding star. Unleashing a 369-yard drive that held the right side of the fairway, Champ left himself just under 200 yards on approach. He played it a bit safe, coming in a bit left of the green, but he was able to pitch it to about four feet.
When the final, victory-sealing birdie putt found the bottom of the cup, the emotion poured out of Champ, his father, and his grandfather on the phone.
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If you haven’t heard already, Cameron Champ grew up in nearby Sacramento, little more than an hour away from the luxurious resort that has hosted the Safeway Open for a half decade. His father, Jeff, had called his own father, Mack, so they could live out the end of the tournament together. Mack – “Pops” to Cameron – had been diagnosed with end-stage cancer, and has entered hospice, preventing him from being at the course with his grandson.
The generational path from Mack, who early in his life wasn’t even allowed to play golf simply because of his skin color, to young Cameron winning on the PGA Tour is covered in outstanding fashion by Cameron Morfit of PGATour.com, but there are few of us who can’t relate in some small way to parts of Champ’s story. It was Pops who bought Cameron his first set of plastic kids’ clubs, Pops who passed his passion for the game along to his grandson.
And it was Pops that Cameron dedicated his victory to, acknowledging his grandfather’s influence on what is still a blossoming profession. “No matter what,” he said, “even if I never win another tournament again or I win however many, this will definitely be the greatest moment of my golfing career.”
It’s clear that Champ has his priorities in the right place. Entering the week not even certain that he’d be able to play with Mack’s time left so uncertain, he found his focus and played some of the best golf of his life. Now, he’s earned an invitation to the Sentry Tournament of Champions in January, and even bigger, his first Masters Tournament this coming April.
Cameron Champ acknowledged that his grandfather’s condition has given him the perspective to understand that there’s far more to this life than golf, and that played a big part in propelling his performance at the Safeway Open. It’s rare to hear someone so relatively young speak with that kind of wisdom and maturity, but I’m not surprised that Champ has reached that point. It’s obvious that he holds his family close in all that he does, and they in turn have done a fantastic job in nurturing his talent to allow him to reach his fullest potential.
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There’s a long year of golf to come, but I don’t expect that we’ll see much to top the pure emotion of this victory by Champ. The sport has a way of bringing out the best in people, and that’s just what we were all privileged to see at the Safeway Open.