Sports

CHAD LEFT HANGING BY THREAD

ROCHESTER – Want to know what Chad Campbell thought of his chances to win the PGA Championship before he got here? Well, it seems he had to all but sprint on the dead run from the scorer’s tent to the Rochester Airport, to honor the non-refundable plane ticket he’d purchased to Dallas.

Favorites don’t figure on skipping town on Sunday before the sun does.

But that was fine with Campbell. The buzz around the PGA Tour has been that the 27-year-old Texan has the gifts and the goods to be the sport’s next hot thing. Across four days at Oak Hill, on a weekend when so many of the world’s best players were driven to their knees, Campbell was one of only three players to finish in red numbers.

That his 2-under-par total of 278 wasn’t enough to overtake Shaun Micheel hardly fazed him. If anything, he looked like he’d just had the time of his life.

“You know, [Saturday] night I was very excited,” said Campbell, who has three wins on the Nationwide Tour to his credit, though he is still searching for his first win on the big tour. “I wasn’t nervous. It was just more a thing being real excited about the day and the position I got myself in to. Even waking up this morning, I felt really good, a little nervous and a little anxious to get out there and start playing.”

It showed, too. Campbell bogeyed the first hole, then gave back shots at No. 6 and No. 7, too, falling to 1-under for the tournament and into third place behind a surging Tim Clark.

Down three shots, Campbell came back on 15, a par-3, when he buried a 25-foot bomb with eight feet of break, which, paired with a bogey from Micheel, narrowed the gap to one shot again, where it stayed until Micheel’s forever 7-iron on No. 18.

“It was a little crazy, back and forth,” Campbell said. “I just tried to stay patient and let things happen and give myself a chance at the end.”