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Unlikely Masters Participant Brian Campbell Looks to Win ‘Zach Johnson’-Style

The shortest hitter on the PGA Tour is teeing it up at the Masters and has a plan to be one of the tournament’s greatest Cinderella stories.

Max Schreiber

Brian Campbell is playing the Masters after winning the Mexico Open in a playoff earlier this year.
Brian Campbell is playing the Masters after winning the Mexico Open in a playoff earlier this year. / JEFF ROMANCE/THE PALM BEACH POST / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Brian Campbell might be teeing it up at the Masters because of a tree. 

In February at the Mexico Open, the 31-year-old was in a playoff against 20-year-old Aldrich Potgieter. And on the second extra hole, Campbell got the break of a lifetime. He sliced his drive into the woods, but it kicked out into the rough en route to a victory-clinching birdie. 

It was his 28th PGA Tour start over a decade. He lost his Tour card in 2017 and didn’t regain status again until this year. 

But thanks to his long-awaited win—and a perfectly placed tree—he’s playing at Augusta National this week. 

And he might be the unlikeliest player in the field. 

“What am I doing here?” Campbell said Tuesday. “As honest as I can say. No, it’s crazy. It's been a whirlwind of a year.”

Campbell is last on Tour driving distance, averaging 276 yards. However, if the wind is howling this week, Campbell’s disadvantage in the tee box might not be as significant. 

If that’s the case, he knows whose game plan to follow. 

“That maybe helps me more because just play a Zach Johnson week,” Campbell said. “If it’s hurting on those holes for everybody, I'll just be playing it how I always play it.”

Johnson was the same age as Campbell in 2007 when he won the Masters. Brutal conditions wreaked havoc on that week, and Johnson finished at 1 over, tying the tournament record for the highest winning score. 

That season, Johnson averaged 280 yards off the tee (this year it’s 285). En route to slipping on the green jacket, he was 57th (out of 60) in the field that week in driving distance at 265 yards. 

Tied for the lead that Sunday on the par-5 13th, Johnson laid up. That wasn’t unusual, though. He didn’t go for any of the par-5s in two that week, yet still played them in 11 under. Then, he sealed the deal with a birdie on the par-3 16th. 

“I watched a lot of that round,” said Campbell, who was 14 years old at the time, “but I was pretty young. “It's hard to remember. I just remember him making swings on 16, how he played 13. I remember that.”

Campbell, a native of Bluffton, S.C., who is ranked No. 113 in the world, has sought out advice from his fellow competitors, such as his former roommate and fellow Mexico Open winner Jake Knapp and Xander Schauffele. 

Considering they are battling him for the green jacket, they might have been limited with their guidance. So he sought out other avenues. 

“I did have a local caddie give me a lot of advice last week on the golf course in general,” Campbell said. “But just watching over the years you see where guys play from. You see what shots they select. There is a reason they do that, it’s because it's the best option.”

However, Campbell is here not just because of a tree in Mexico, but because he can play golf better than most people on earth. Therefore, he’ll rely on his skill to be one of the Masters’s greatest Cinderella stories. Even more so than Johnson. 

“I know what I'm capable of golf-wise,” Campbell said. “To have all this happen sooner than I thought is just a cherry on top. Now we can put our head down and go to work and see what we can do.”

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Max Schreiber
MAX SCHREIBER

Max Schreiber is a contributor to the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated, covering golf. Before joining SI in October 2024, the Mahwah, N.J., native, worked as an associate editor for the Golf Channel and wrote for RyderCup.com and FanSided. He is a multiplatform producer for Newsday and has a bachelor's in communications and journalism from Quinnipiac University. In his free time, you can find him doing anything regarding the Yankees, Giants, Knicks and Islanders.

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