In each of his first three years on the PGA Tour, Cameron Champ ranked first, second and third in driving distance, averaging 317.9 yards, 322 yards and 317.1 yards respectively. It’s not just that the 6ft Texan blows it past most players in the game, but rather how he manages to do so. There’s not the explosive twitchiness and brawn of Bryson DeChambeau, he isn’t built like the sinewy and freakishly athletic Dustin Johnson and he doesn’t have the tightly wound torque and uncoiling of Rory McIlroy. Rather, at first glance he looks simply, well, normal, with a stance that’s slightly narrow and a smoothness that belies the prodigious power he produces.
Champ also isn’t just a one-trick sideshow. The 26-year-old already has three career victories, the first of which came at the 2018 Sanderson Farms Championship in what was just his ninth career start on tour. Wins followed in 2019 and this year at the 3M Open in Minnesota, where he fended off dehydration and dizziness on his way to five birdies and a bogey-free 66 in the final round.
Even rarer, though, Champ – whose father is black and whose late grandfather grew up in the segregated Jim Crow South and later taught his grandson the game at a golf course in Texas – has become a provocateur for change, calling attention to continued racial and social imbalances within golf and beyond in the USA. He recently sat down with GM to talk about that, his burgeoning career and much more...
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