Brian Campbell’s Mexico Open Win Among Most Unfathomable We’ll Ever See

Hand up. I’ve got an admission to make.

I know that it’s fashionable in the prognostication industry to never let ‘em see you sweat a bet you didn’t make, to vigorously pat yourself on the back for the winners and forget the losers ever happened, but I missed this one.

There were 132 players in the field at last week’s Mexico Open.

If you’d handed me 130 betting slips pre-tournament and said I couldn’t duplicate any names for outright plays, I still don’t think I would’ve gotten to eventual champion Brian Campbell.

Misery loves company, though, and I’ve got plenty of it with this one.

At BetMGM, the least-bet player before the opening round was Campbell.

Think about how unbelievably unfathomable that fact really is.

Exactly 131 other players received more attention in the betting markets than the guy who actually won the golf tournament.

That is a record which will never be broken.

There’s good reason for this, of course. Campbell is the shortest hitter on the PGA Tour this season, averaging 262.0 yards off the tee entering last week. It might make some sense if the guy with zero career top-10s made some noise at Waialae or Colonial, but Vidanta Vallarta is among the most driver-heavy venues on the schedule — a place where a player can often smash the big stick without any regard for precision. All of which is to say: He was at a greater disadvantage last week than he normally is.

As if to only further exemplify this idea, the player Campbell defeated in the playoff was Aldrich Potgieter, who just happens to be the PGA Tour’s driving distance leader this season. Averaging 328.7 per wallop, the gap between them was an astounding 66.7 yards, which was further exacerbated when Campbell’s tee shot on the second extra hole was heading for OB, hit a tree and caromed back into play, leaving him 94 yards behind his opponent.

At an event where nothing made sense, it was only appropriate that he made birdie from there to win.

What also didn’t make sense, though, were those viewers who criticized this finish because it didn’t involve the biggest names.

We’re just a few weeks removed from a Super Bowl during which a majority of neutral observers rooted against the favorite for no other reason than Chiefs-fatigue after they’d won the previous two championships. I’m well aware that individual sports are more dependent upon superstars showing up and showing out, but it’s pretty fun to watch a Hollywood script unfold on your television screen once in a while, too.

That’s what happened Sunday afternoon. It might not have been a real-life Roy McAvoy moment, but it wasn’t far off for a guy who last owned full status on the PGA Tour in 2017. While he regained it through the Korn Ferry circuit last season, he didn’t win an event there, meaning he’d played 186 sanctioned tournaments without a victory before joining the likes of Rory McIlroy, Hideki Matsuyama and Ludvig Aberg on the early winners list this season.

It also served as a pretty important reminder: No matter how much research you put into your bets, no matter how much you study, no matter how much you believe you’re on the right side, weird stuff happens sometimes.

We all want to trick ourselves into believing we have the magic elixir on a weekly basis, that we’ve unlocked the one statistical anomaly which will lead us down the path toward financial success.

The reality is that for all of the metaphors we know for golf being just like life itself, there’s no better one than the simplest, which is to suggest that anything can happen at any moment, especially when you least suspect it.

Following his improbable title, Campbell was asked if he had any encouragement to offer to other professional golfers who have similarly struggled to reach this apex.

“Trust yourself,” he said. “This is a crazy game that we choose to play, but keep believing in yourself and have a lot of grit. It’s cool to see what can happen.”

That’s powerful advice for golfers, but it should serve as a strong recommendation for golf bettors, as well. They’re not all going to be winners. Golf is like life. Life is unpredictable. Every once in a while, a Brian Campbell is going to happen. Sometimes, you’ve just gotta enjoy the unexpected, then trust yourself and keep on going.