Once-promising PGA Tour rookie Cameron Champ takes off at Rocket Mortgage Classic

PGA Tour rookie Cameron Champ, in a long drought since winning in his second start back in October, has the lead thru 36 holes at Rocket Mortgage Classic

For the better part of 2019, the time when Cameron Champ was the rising star on the PGA Tour seemed like a distant memory.

Champ, the powerful 24-year-old who won the Sanderson Farms Championship in October in just the second start of his rookie season, hasn’t come close to matching that performance recently. But on Friday at Detroit Golf Club, Champ began to look like that promising newcomer once again.

Champ shot a seven-under round of 65 in the second round of the inaugural Rocket Mortgage Classic, taking a two-shot lead at 13-under through 36 holes with the afternoon groups still to finish.

It wasn’t just that Champ took apart the golf course on Friday, it’s how he did it. The colossal drives were there like they always are for him, but for the first time in a while his short game was solid. Champ rolled off five birdies in a row on the front nine, hitting his approach shots to within 15 feet each time and holing the birdie opportunities. On the par-five seventh hole, a 365-yard drive left him just 179 yards to the pin that he hit to seven feet. He made the putt for eagle, then added another birdie at the par-three ninth to make the turn in eight-under 28.

“Everything just kept flowing, and for the first nine holes the hole looked pretty big for a while,” he told PGA Tour Live after his round.

His first bogey of the round came at the 13th, but he got the stroke back with a birdie on the par-five 17th. His round ended on a sour note, however, when he missed a four-foot putt for par at the closing 18th.

Once again, Champ put on a show with his driver. On the front-nine alone, he hit drives of 340, 368, 344 and 365 yards. He leads the PGA Tour this season in driving distance at 316.6 yards and is fourth in strokes gained: off the tee. This is nothing new to him. At the 2017 U.S. Open, while still a student at Texas A&M, Champ led the field in driving distance while finishing in 32nd place as an amateur. He led the Web.com Tour last year at 343 yards, 24 yards more than the PGA Tour’s leading driver.

His ability to overpower golf courses became apparent early in his rookie season when he won the Sanderson Farms by four shots. He then added two more top-10 finishes in his next three events. But in his past nine starts, Champ has missed the cut seven times. He also withdrew from the Players Championship after an opening round 78. He was still hitting it long, but it was his short game that was keeping him back. Champ ranks last on tour this year in strokes gained: around the green and 157th in approach to the green.

That finally changed on Friday, and Champ says he’s happy to see that the work he’s put in the past few months is starting to show. “It’s definitely been a rough month, month and a half, two months for me,” he said. “But I’ve been working hard. Just to see it slowly pay off is good.”

Ryan Armour and Nate Lashley are currently tied for second at 11-under, two shots behind Champ with Lashley still having nine holes to play. This year marks the first edition of the Rocket Mortgage Classic, the first event to take place in the Detroit area in a decade.