Golf: Campbell's boyhood dreams come true

By David Leggat

Picture the scene.

You're 18 years old, invited as an amateur to play the New Zealand Open golf championship for the first time, and at a course just up the road from home. You're promising, but then so are a handful of your contemporaries.

The fairytale ending would have you birdie the final few holes, go to a playoff then, with the family watching, grab a dramatic victory over the big Yank brought over at a cost of big dollars to add so-called lustre to the event.

It doesn't quite work out that way, but there is a parable here, according to the Open's first champion of the millennium, Michael Campbell.

"I watched Greg Turner win [at Paraparaumu in 1989] and I said to myself: 'One day I'll be good enough to win this tournament'.

"If you follow your dreams, as I have for the last 17 years since I was a 13-year-old, anything's possible.

"Anything's possible," Campbell repeated after taming the Paraparaumu Beach club course, half an hour north of the suburb in which he grew up - Titahi Bay - last Sunday.

Campbell's playoff victory over fellow New Zealander, new USPGA Tour representative Craig Perks - filling the role of the expensive American in the imagery - at the second playoff hole ended a day dripping with emotion.

But there was more to the victory - earned after Campbell had tonked the course, rated amongst the world's top 100 by one renowned American golfing magazine, to the tune of a final-round 64 - than simply sentiment.

Campbell believed the quality of his game, from the standpoints of both purely technical and mental resilience, has advanced.

He cited his 40-foot putt, uphill right to left on the 15th green, as an example of how he has learned to put his foot to the floor when required.

"My game has gone to the next level. You see it in the world-class players. They find an extra gear at a certain point when they need to.

"I knew I had to do something special to put the pressure on Craig then, and holed that humungous putt.

"The last nine holes make a golf tournament. That's when you find out how good you are, and now I realise I've gone to the next level emotionally-wise."

With the Johnnie Walker Classic title in Taiwan already won this season, Campbell comfortably led the Australasian Tour Order of Merit going into the Heineken Classic in Perth this week.

When he stepped onto his first hole at The Vines on Thursday it was as if he was still at Paraparaumu - he had an eagle three to kick-start a 4-under opening round.

His hunger for success - as distinct from money and fame - is firmly in place.

"I don't really care about the prizemoney. This is the reason I'm playing golf -- to win tournaments, and I had goose bumps on my goose bumps walking onto the [last] green at Paraparaumu because I was in a position to win a tournament."

It has been a roller-coaster few years for the 30-year-old.

From Eisenhower Trophy winner, Campbell went on to be the heroic, albeit defeated British Open hero in 1995, but that prefaced a dramatic slump in fortunes.

Poor form and injury combined to cost him ranking and rating - cue the rumble of flash-in-the-pan talk - but the shot-making gifts are intact.

Leading up to the Open, Campbell had hired a house beside the 11th fairway to accommodate all the relatives who came to watch the local boy on the closest thing to his local patch.

"I'm a very family-orientated person. Every morning there'd be 50 people round there. It was like a creche, 30 kids and 20 adults all related to me somehow.

"That brought back a lot of fond memories for me as a kid.

"I used to go up to Patea or Hawera at Christmas or New Year. There'd be 50 people at a house that slept 12. This was the same -- and 10 cars parked outside."

It was the family factor which helped spur Campbell to produce his scintillating final round. Everywhere he went he saw familiar faces in the gallery, and rather than get him uptight, they helped to relax him.

"On the 11th hole, putting for a birdie, I saw my sister, two cousins and an auntie. My sister did this [poking his tongue out] at me. It was all a bit of fun.

"Other guys want to be more focussed. I like to scope out a bit."

Amid the talk of where the Open should be held - corporate money demands Auckland be the host at least two out of every three years - many of the players maintain they'd take Paraparaumu Beach every time.

And you won't hear any different from the boy who grew to live his sporting dream.