Campos' 'best week' delivers magic, tears
Puerto Rican desperately wanted job security for family; he got that and much more
Rafael Campos is showered with blessings: a baby and his first PGA Tour in same week (Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)
Rafael Campos burst into tears on the 18th green in Bermuda when his final putt dropped. A long week at the end of a longer season on top of an even longer career journey had all magically come together in the winds that buffeted Port Royal Golf Course on the weekend at the PGA Tour’s penultimate fall event.
A brand new father on Monday before the tournament at age 36, the journeyman Puerto Rican was on the brink of losing his hard-earned PGA Tour card after five consecutive missed cuts this fall. All the stress of a family man facing a demotion was wiped away in the tears of PGA Tour victory after 13 years as a pro but only his second season on golf’s top circuit.
“I just can’t believe this is actually happening to me,” Campos said through heaving sobs on Golf Channel when he was interviewed immediately after his winning par putt sealed a three-shot victory.
This was all the magic that golf can deliver in one emotional package as Campos secured his card for two more years and booked a spot in his first Masters next April.
“Best week of my life,” he said. “After such a bad year, to have things kind of go my way, everything together at once, I’m just so happy and grateful to have the support I do. My team, my coaches, my sponsors, my family. My caddie did a great job today. … I’m just grateful to be able to call myself a PGA Tour champion. It’s something I’ve dreamt about all my life. I just want to call my family.
“It has been a surreal week. I’m just extremely happy to be a champion and not have to worry about where I’m going to be playing the next couple of years.”
Campos is only the second American from Puerto Rico to ever win on the PGA Tour, joining the incomparable Chi Chi Rodriguez, who died earlier this year.
Campos started playing golf in San Juan when he was 9 and turned pro in 2011 after playing in college at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va. He climbed the ladder from the Tour de las Américas, PGA Tour Latinoamérica and what’s now the Korn Ferry Tour, twice earning promotion to the PGA Tour. He lost his card once after his rookie season (extended by COVID) by got back in 2024 as the 30th and final KFT player to be promoted off the points list.
He missed 16 cuts in 23 starts this season before his sudden breakthrough the week his first child was born.
“This game is so hard when things aren’t going well, so hard to actually get yourself to be confident,” Campos said. “Things have just been so different this week. I just don’t know, I’m just so grateful to be able to finish atop the leaderboard.”
Campos’ wife delivered their baby girl, Paola Isabel, on Monday in Puerto Rico and Campos didn’t arrive at the course in Southampton, Bermuda, until Thursday less than 90 minutes before his first round tee time.
“I was very fortunate none of the flights got delayed,” he said.
Rafael Campos sobbed after his life-altering victory in Bermuda (Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)
Campos leaned into his faith in the way everything fell together so perfectly and carried him through a turbulent week and final round in the roaring winds across the Atlantic island.
“I’ve got to say this, like there’s a few times God has been present, like very present and this was clearly one of them,” he said. “There were a couple things that I thought about during the round. One was I remember back years ago I would always pray for some things or write them down. Ironically, like 12 years later I found the note and everything that I wanted came true, but it took 12 years.
“You don’t pray to have things happen like right now and all those things. Ironically, all those things happened. So I knew back then, ‘Oh, He’s definitely with us.’ I’ve been praying every day the last year, you know, hoping to get a good week, hoping to just give myself some security and today, or this week, I just knew He was with me. I knew my family was with me.
“When I won in 2019 in Abaco (on the KFT), I remember feeling like very calm and there are a couple sun rays that I would look at, like that’s kind of weird, I know He’s there. And today it happened, you know. I was extremely calm.”
Campos’ sudden success follows an anecdotal trend of players elevating their games right after becoming fathers. A particularly famous example was Danny Willett becoming a father immediately before winning the 2017 Masters. Campos was aware of the curious history of such things.
“Yes, I do watch the PGA Tour and I always told myself like why do these people who keep having babies keep winning?” he said. “I’m like, when my wife got pregnant, it’s either they already had the baby or just won or wife is pregnant and won. I’m like, God, honey, we’ve got to start doing something.
“It’s funny, my game got really bad as soon as I found out I was going to be a father, like extremely bad. I remember that’s something I spoke to my psychologist about and we were trying to figure out why everything has gone so bad the last like six months. I remember she asked me like, ‘hey, when did it start?’ I’m like, hey, ironically it started as soon as my wife told me we’re pregnant after the Puerto Rico Open. She said, what do you think changed?
“I remember since that day, I’m like now I really want to play well, I want to make money so I can save so I can give her the life — my mind just completely shifted. I just started focusing on like, man, I want to do as well as I can just to provide for her, which is a great way to think about it, but it completely took me off target. I missed, what, 14 out of the last 15 cuts or something like that. Yeah, now stories like that do come true apparently. I just can’t believe I’m here sitting with you guys and being able to say I’m a PGA Tour champion.”
When all the perks that come with winning like a $1.4 million check and invitations to the Masters, PGA Championship and Sentry tournament of champions in Kapalua, Campos’ reaction was “Geez!”
But they all pale to him in comparison to the two-year exemption through 2026.
“Honestly, the most important thing for me was job security,” he said. “That’s something we struggle here on the PGA Tour with because it’s so hard to get up here and it’s so easy to lose everything. I’ve been a pro for 15, 16 years and this year was honestly the first time that I probably would have had zero status anywhere, like if I had not done well this week and kind of starting back from before PGA Latin America.
“In the back of my mind I’m like man, it’s going to be tough just because I’m older. I want to provide as much as I can for my family and so money was never a factor in all this. I didn’t even — I honestly had not even realized that I just won a tournament. Like you just saying those things, possible invitation to these things, money, all I wanted was job security, to tell you the truth. That was the only thing in my mind.
“Just to be able to know that I have a few years coming up now of not having to worry whether or not I’m in a tournament or not and being able to set a good schedule and kind of mentally prepare myself for all those is just unbelievably huge. That is the most important thing right now for me.”
Campos and Austin Eckroat, the winner at the World Wide Technology Championship in Mexico the week before, bring the 2025 Masters field to 76 players. This week’s winner in the RSM Classic at Sea Island, Ga., also gets an automatic spot.
There are currently eight players not otherwise qualified hoping to retain their standing in the final OWGR top 50 ranking published at the end of 2024 who will get into Augusta without having to sweat it out the first three months of 2025: Tom Kim (No. 27); Nick Dunlap (33); Max Greyersman (37); Denny McCarthy (39); Corey Conners (41); Rasmus Højgaard (45); Min Woo Lee (48); and Lucas Glover (50).