COMMENTARY

By Jim Litke

updated 1:46 a.m. ET June 25, 2005

Jim Litke

PINEHURST, N.C. -

He used up his 15 minutes of fame.

Or so everyone thought about Michael Campbell.

“I worked really hard for this, ups and downs my whole career,” he said in the fading light of Sunday evening, half a world away from the nine-hole muni where the New Zealander learned to play golf.

The slim silver U.S. Open trophy he had just wrested away from Tiger Woods was still clutched so close that he could see his reflection in it.

“But it’s worth the work,” he added. “It’s just amazing.”

Ten years ago, Campbell was going to be golf’s next big thing. He came out of nowhere to grab the third-round lead at the British Open, thanks to a miraculous escape from the toughest spot in the toughest bunker on the toughest hole in major championship golf. What Campbell couldn’t have known at the time was that singular shot would become a snapshot of the adversity that lay ahead.

Before teeing off the next day, Campbell performed the Haka, a chanting, knee-slapping Maori ritual dance in a brazen challenge to his opponents. Then he went out on the Old Course at St. Andrews in gusts so stiff even the seagulls walked and shot 76. That left him a stroke short of making the playoff eventually won by John Daly. And just as quickly, Campbell went back to nowhere.

His career from that point until this one was more down than up, and never lower than at the end of one of Campbell’s infrequent forays on the PGA Tour. At the 2003 Players Championship, his long, uncomplicated swing had become a series of short, herky-jerky motions, hampered by overanalysis.

“I feel like an alien has taken over my body,” Campbell said back then, and soon after, he retreated to the European tour.

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There were highlights, to be sure, such as the first time he stared down Woods, at the Johnnie Walker Classic in Taiwan in 1999. That Campbell managed to hold off Woods again, this time over the tight fairways and treacherous, domed greens at Pinehurst No. 2, might have surprised some people. But not Tiger.

“Look at his career. He was playing real well, then all of a sudden, he lost it,” Woods said. “He lost his game and had to rebuild it from scratch. He did a fantastic job of coming back, from a person missing cut after cut after cut, to now, a person who’s the U.S. Open champion.

“That’s a lot of work right there,” Woods added, “and he should be very proud of it.”

Woods’ caddie, Stevie Williams, a Kiwi himself, was even more effusive.

“I think that,” Williams said, “was the single greatest sports moment in New Zealand history.”

Forget about how long that moment was in coming — the amazing thing is that it happened at all.

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