Cameron Champ largely has gone missing in recent months and even spilling over to years, yet all it seemed to take for his talent to resurface was a return to the Sanderson Farms Championship, a tournament he won in 2018.
“I love the course,” he said of the Country Club of Jackson in Jackson, Miss., where he has a scoring average of 67.91 in 11 rounds. He equaled the best score of the day in the third round on Saturday, a seven-under par 65 that placed him in a tie for sixth, five shots behind leader Ben Griffin.
Champ, 28, a three-time PGA Tour winner, had missed 17 cuts in his previous 24 starts and has fallen to 288th in the World Ranking.
“I think everything today kind of came together,” he said. “It was nice and smooth. I just felt like I had control of my ball, and then on the greens I’ve been confident. Obviously if I can drive it well here, it definitely sets me up, and I’ve been able to do that so far.
“Today I think I finally took advantage of that. The first day, I felt like I didn’t make as many putts. Even yesterday was kind of iron play and chipping around the greens. I hit some decent shots in front of par-5s and just into-the-grain chips I kind of struggled with those yesterday, but today I was fine. If I can just do that, kind of go about my day like I did today, we’ll just see where I stand after.”
Another measure of his lethargic play is that he is 145th in the FedExCup Fall Standings. He intends to play virtually every week from here on out to the end of the year in an effort to improve his position.
“I think I’m in a good space right now,” he said. “The game has been good. It’s just a matter of allowing myself to be able to play and kind of just get out of my way. This week it’s been a nice fresh kind of start, and like I said, just try to play my game, and I know if I do that, I’ll be perfectly fine. This game is already hard enough, so we definitely don’t need to make it harder on ourselves.
“I’m just going to go out there the same as I have this week and just stay within myself, play my game, and hopefully we get some good results.”