We find ourselves on the 18th hole of the The Dunes Golf and Beach Club, an excellent course by Robert Trent Jones located in the heart of Myrtle Beach, something like the home of recreational golf in the United States, the closest thing to the Spanish Costa del Sol. It’s the third day of the PGA Tour tournament that debuts this week in those parts and Jorge Campillo has missed the tee shot to the left… Too far to the left.
His ball goes into a rather thick area of trees, on the pine needles. The position of the ball is quite good, but he doesn’t have a direct line to the flag. Impossible. The trees prevent it. The logical solution is to get back to the fairway and look for the approach and putt from the fairway to save par or make bogey at worst. However, Campillo had other plans for that shot…
He didn’t hesitate for a moment. As soon as he got to the ball, he studied the situation with his caddie Jesús Legarrea and they decided that he could shoot for the green. He could, of course, for humans it was out of reach. He planned the next shot: he aimed to the right of the hospitality tent to the right of the green, or in other words, approximately 50 meters to the right of the flag. From there, he had to hit a massive hook (right to left effect). He had 162 to the flag and a 9 iron in his hands.
It was perfect. Impressive. “I have no doubt that it is one of the best shots I have ever hit in my life. I think on TV you can’t really appreciate the effect the ball has made. If I almost miss the green on the left…”, he explains to Ten Golf.
Not only did he not miss the green on the left, but it bounced well inside the green, about 15 meters from the flag, and the ball slowly and obediently approached the hole until it ended up a meter away. “I had to concentrate on the putt. It’s not pleasant to miss something so short after the shot I had given. It’s not something you want to do. It was heavy“, he says.
Campillo never considered playing to the fairway and forgetting about the green on that shot. “It was a difficult shot, but I knew that if the hook didn’t come out in the end, in the worst case I would end up in the stands and there is a drop zone there. The approach was not very complicated”, he highlights.
The second shot of the 18th hole this Saturday is one of the best of Campillo’s entire career, which is saying something, perhaps in healthy competition with the second one he hit on Sunday on the 16th hole of the Trophy Hassan II, when he won his first tournament of the DP World Tour in Morocco. Also then, as now, he was very fine with the irons. “I have hit the irons very well again, with confidence, the drive has not been bad, although I have missed some and the putter is true that I have made some good ones, but I have also missed two very short ones that have made me very angry”, he explains. Up there are also the iron shot of the 16th and, above all, the one of the 17th, hitting it low, perfect, a meter from the flag from 180 meters.
In this sense, he has a very clear roadmap to be able to win the tournament this Sunday. “If Chris Gotterup plays well, it will be almost impossible to catch him, but if he is not very accurate, I will have to play very well and not make mistakes like the two putts that have escaped me. I like the opportunity I have, although in a way we are at the mercy of what the leader does having a four-shot lead”, he dissects.
