Tiger Woods’ shock 2019 Masters triumph will never be forgotten. Eleven years on from his last major title and off the back of a myriad of surgeries and controversies, many thought that the GOAT’s best days were behind him. But there he was, arms spread wide, tears streaming as he rolled back the years to claim the green jacket once again, edging out Dustin Johnson, Xander Schauffele, and Brooks Koepka by just one stroke in one of the tightest Augusta finishes of all time.
It remains the most recent triumph by an African-American golfer and one of the sport’s four major championships, and truth be told, between Tiger’s penultimate triumph in 2008 and that glorious Augusta Sunday afternoon in 2019, no one really came close to claiming a major prize. Even in the six years since, no one has truly threatened to take over from Woods as the next great African-American golfing hope.
One look at the betting odds for the upcoming US Open will tell you just how far away from the summit of professional golf African American players truly are. The latest odds from Lucky Rebel don’t have a single such player listed in the entirety of their odds list, as Scottie Scheffler tops the charts at +450. Truth be told, the shadow of Tiger’s herculean efforts has never been longer.
But there was one weekend. One weekend in August 2020 when, just for a moment, it seemed like the next breakthrough was just around the corner.
Heading to Harding Park
By the time the 2020 PGA Championship arrived, the sporting calendar had been gutted, reshuffled, and duct-taped back together. Originally scheduled for May, the tournament was pushed to August because of global events, events that left TPC Harding Park in San Francisco without a single paying spectator in attendance.
Dustin Johnson, then World No. 1, arrived as the clear favorite to thrive amid the eerie silence, while Rory McIlroy came in as a former champion hungry to end a lengthy drought of his own. Brooks Koepka, twice a PGA champion, carried that unmistakable aura of Sunday menace. And Collin Morikawa, a 23-year-old California kid generating serious buzz on tour, was beginning to draw serious attention as a rookie sensation.
Cameron Champ? Who? An afterthought, that’s who.
The 24-year-old Californian with three PGA Tour wins and a reputation as a ferocious driver of the golf ball should have been happy at simply qualifying to play at one of golf’s biggest spectacles. He was featuring for just the third time at a major championship and wasn’t a player anyone was seriously circling as a threat. That was about to change.
The Story Nobody Saw Coming
Thursday’s opening 71 was respectable, solid enough — the kind of round that keeps you in a tournament without announcing anything. But Friday was something else entirely. Champ surged through the field with a mighty six-under 64, marrying his prodigious power off the tee with a precision and composure far beyond his tender 24 years. The golf world sat up. Could Champ really be the next breakthrough figure in the sport’s most loaded historical context?
Saturday’s 67 confirmed it wasn’t a fluke. Three rounds in, Champ sat just one shot behind Dustin Johnson — the World No. 1, the pre-tournament favorite, the man the field had expected to dominate. The afterthought had become the story. More than that, he’d become a symbol; an African American golfer on the brink of major glory for the first time since the only man who’d ever been there before him.
The Back Nine That Wouldn’t Bend
Championship Sunday began with Champ looking like a major champion in waiting. Birdies at the fourth and sixth briefly pushed him into a share of the lead — an African American golfer co-leading a major championship in the modern era, the weight of that moment almost impossible to fully articulate. And then came the ninth, and hopes evaporated.
A double bogey. It punctured the momentum like a pin to a balloon. The back nine at Harding Park demanded things that Sunday pressure always demands — nerve, recovery, the ability to stall a collapse before it compounds — and Champ, for all his remarkable talent, couldn’t fully stanch the bleeding. He finished the day with an even par 70. Tenth place. Five shots off the winning score. If you’d have said that he would have finished in that exact position before a ball was struck on Thursday morning, he’d have snapped your hand off. But he knows just how close he came, and just how different things could have played out if he had managed to navigate the ninth.
In the end, maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. Collin Morikawa stormed down that same back nine that caused Champ so many problems in the opposite direction. A legendary eagle on the 16th all but sealed the championship, and his closing 64 — the lowest final round by a PGA champion in 25 years — delivered the Wanamaker Trophy to a player who looked entirely untroubled by the occasion. Morikawa was emphatic. Historic in his own right. But that’s a different story for a different piece.
This one belongs to the man who finished tenth. One title. One torch. One chance that slipped away.
