Master’s class in perspective
A&M product Champ reflects on racial reckoning in golf, country
Mack Champ grew up walking Texas fairways, but he wasn’t allowed to swing clubs on them. As a kid in the 1950s, he caddied for white folks on a nine-hole course in Columbus, earning 40 cents an hour carrying two bags at a time with his brothers, all the while having little idea if he possessed any aptitude for the game.
He had to cross an ocean to learn that. When the Air Force sent him to England and Germany in the 1960s, Champ spent his free time whacking golf balls at practice ranges on military bases. Decades later, his grandson would tell reporters stories he’d heard about how the elder Champ fell in love with golf over the years, inspired in part by a man named Lee Elder.
Early Thursday morning, that grandson — 25-year-old Cameron Champ — stood in wonder at Augusta National’s first tee, watching his grandfather’s hero serve as an honorary starter for the 85th edition of the Masters.
Mack wasn’t there to see it. He died 18 months ago after a battle with stomach cancer. But he was the man who put clubs in Cameron’s hands at the age of 2, and he was the man who Cameron spoke to via cell phone before he even signed the scorecard following his first PGA Tour victory, and he was the man who gave the kid advice he might find helpful as he tries to make this emotional weekend even more remarkable.
“I tell Cameron it’s not just where you come from,” Mack told Golfweek magazine in 2017. “It’s where you’re going.”
Cameron Champ, clearly, has put plenty of thought into both. Not only is the former Texas A&M standout one of the most talented young players in the sport, he’s also one of the most reflective ones.
Champ pays homage to Elder, who became the first Black man to play in the Masters in 1975. He’s been known to scrawl the names of police shooting victims Breonna Taylor and Jacob Blake on his shoes, and when fellow competitors on the range ask, “Who are they?” he tells them. And on a tour not exactly known for competitors taking stands on voting rights or social justice, Champ, who is biracial, has become the loudest voice.
“It’s not that I like to be,” he told reporters this week. “It’s something I feel like I have to do.”
His platform figures to keep getting bigger as long as he continues his knack for playing some of his best golf in major championships. Ranked as high as 67th in the world last year, Champ finished 10th at the PGA Championship, and took 19th at the 2020 Masters. He slumped a bit heading into this week, but Champ racked up six birdies Friday to vault himself into contention.
Before the weather horn sounded Saturday to put this weekend’s festivities at Augusta on hold, Champ was 2-under par, tied for 13th and within striking distance of leader Justin Rose.
The fact that he raised his game after watching Elder’s ceremony might not be a coincidence.
“Lee has shaped the way for African-American golfers, specifically my grandfather,” Champ told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday. “If it wasn’t for Lee and Calvin Peete and quite a few other names, my grandfather probably (never) would have played or been interested.”
It came as no surprise, then, that following his grandfather’s death, Champ’s foundation announced he was donating funds to establish two scholarships in his grandfather’s name for men’s and women’s golfers at Prairie View A&M. That historically Black university is located just 50 miles from where Mack was raised, and sits just down the road from College Station, where Cameron honed his game for three years before turning pro.
The younger Champ didn’t grow up in Texas. His grandfather once told him a story about how, during a stop on a bus trip home from basic training, he was denied service at a whitesonly lunch counter in the same city where his grandson would eventually attend college. After more than 10 years stationed overseas, including a stint in Vietnam, Mack settled his family in Sacramento, Calif.
Mack’s son Jeff — Cameron’s father — played college baseball at San Diego State and lasted two years in the Baltimore Orioles’ minorleague system. Cameron also grew up in Sacramento, but he unleashed his power swing on the golf course. In 2019, he led the PGA Tour with an average drive of 317.9 yards.
That distance has come in handy this weekend, but so has his perspective.
“It’s just taking it all in and enjoying it,” the younger Champ told the JournalConstitution. “My success is helping others and trying to do as much as I can for others. So the better I succeed out here, the more
I’m able to help.”
In short, he sounds like a man who appreciates what got him where he is now.
And a man who knows exactly where he’s going.