Campbell rides out season's storm

Michael Campbell needs no one to tell him that golf is a fickle mistress, with mood swings beyond comprehension.

From the depths of despair, where it seemed he could hardly put two successive shots together, and where he missed one cut after another on the US Tour until it got to the stage where it simply wasn't funny, Campbell yesterday found redemption for his season's turmoil by dramatically winning a three-way play-off at the first hole of sudden death to take the Nissan Irish Open title.

On a day when the weather changed more often than the tide that laps onto three shorelines around this famous north Dublin links, with heavy showers intermingling with spells of sunshine and, finally, an electrical storm forcing the postponement of the play-off until it had cleared, Campbell - who had tied with Thomas Bjorn, of Denmark, and Sweden's Peter Hedblom on 11-under-par 277 after 72 holes - eventually produced a stunningly pure shot to stop the day stretching any further into the evening.

The 18th hole at Portmarnock is a par four of 411 yards with classic pot bunkers down the right side of the fairway, and the temptation is to overcompensate by flirting with the left rough.

Which is what both Bjorn, a week on from his British Open travails, and Hedblom, playing in his second play-off of the season, did.

Campbell, though, split the fairway with a drive and, first to play, hammered home his advantage with an eight-iron approach of 145 yards to an elevated green that finished 12 inches from the hole.

For a time, the Kiwi thought the ball had actually dropped into the hole. It hadn't, but it was nearly as good. The onus, now, was on the other two to respond; and they did, although not nearly as wonderfully as Campbell had managed.

Bjorn, next to play, from the second cut of rough, hit his approach to 25 feet, the ball stubbornly refusing to roll down the swale to a place that would have reduced any chance he had of birdieing the hole; and Hedblom, from the first cut, put his approach 25 feet short of the flag, in a similar position from which he had holed out on the 72nd hole to salvage his par.

As the three players approached the green, with the grandstands that had been evacuated half-an-hour earlier during the electrical storm once again full to capacity, it was obvious to one and all that there could be no missed putts. Not this time, as Campbell's ball nestled just a foot from the hole and, in matchplay, would have been a "gimme".

Bjorn, knowing the stakes, faced a double-break putt - firstly from right-to-left and then from left-to-right - that simply had to be holed if his interest in the play-off were to be maintained.

The ball shaved the hole, but refused to move the extra half-inch that would have kept his hopes alive.

For the second week in a row, the Dane was forced to accept second best.

Then it was down to Hedblom. In playing the hole earlier, the Swede had hit his tee-shot into one of the steep-faced fairway bunkers and did well to advance his recovery shot some 50 yards up the fairway, from where he pitched to 25 feet and sank the putt, falling to his knees as if in prayer at managing to sink the putt.

This time, however, the stakes were even higher; and, like Bjorn, he made sure he didn't leave the ball short. But, like Bjorn's, his refused to fall into the hole either.

"It was exactly the same putt as I'd had earlier, (but) a little slower after the rain and I pulled it and knew straight away it wasn't going to fall," said Hedblom.

All that was left was for Campbell to go through the formality of putting out, which he did - and the title, the cheque for €300,000 and the Waterford Crystal trophy was his. After a season in America where he never managed to make a cut in 12 tournaments, his return to happier hunting grounds in Europe had brought about a transformation even more swiftly than he could have imagined.

Since returning to the European Tour, playing his first tournament at the Volvo PGA in May, Campbell at least stopped the rot that had afflicted him in America.

Still, his best finish before yesterday's win - the second play-off success of his career - had been tied-48th in that championship in Wentworth.

Yesterday, with the wind accentuating the challenge of the links, Campbell started off tied for the lead with Bjorn and England's David Lynn. Of the trio, Lynn - without a tour win - was first to fade, suffering two bogeys in his first five holes. Lynn eventually signed for a 73, two shots off a place in the play-off.

Hedblom had set the clubhouse target with his final round 68, for 11-under-par, one of only three rounds in the 60s, and the 71s compiled by Bjorn and Campbell - whose only bogey on the back nine came on the 11th, where he took two shots to get out of a fairway bunker before finishing with seven successive pars - in the final pairing were sufficient to match him and force the play-off.

And that superbly executed eight-iron ensured Campbell claimed his sixth European Tour win, and first since he stumbled over the finishing line in capturing the European Open at the K Club a year ago.

"The two wins were two extremes, weren't they?" said Campbell. "This is the opposite extreme. I haven't been contending in a tournament for 13 months (since his European Open win) and today I felt comfortable. It's amazing how quickly it comes back to you."

It would seem the bad days that threatened to blight Campbell's year have been blown away. The future, again, looks bright.