Campbell’s Beginnings

Hawera-born, Brighton-based golfer Michael Campbell is eating bacon sandwiches at the Royal Ashdown Forest clubhouse in Sussex where he explains his golfing initiation in Taranaki. “I started playing on a local course where you had to dodge sheep and climb over electrified fences,” Campbell says. He turned professional in 1993 and beat Tiger Woods in 2005 to win the US Open. Campbell hopes to repeat the feat, though without competition from an injured Woods, when he tees off at Royal Birkdale in the Open next month. “It will be quite different not to have Tiger,” he says. “He adds so much, another dimension to every tournament he plays in. It’s a shame, but it gives us more of a chance.”