Golf & Tourism Magazine July - September 2014 | Page 29

Cover Story

“There’s not enough
money in this tour
to play mediocre;
there’s not much
margin of error,”
he says. Campos is
grateful to his family
and a few faithful
sponsors for helping
ensure that there is
any margin at all.

Pay to Play, and
Play to Pay
If those missed opportunities are frequently on his mind, so are the challenges of playing on a second-tier tour
that offers neither the creature comforts nor the lucrative opportunities enjoyed by those in the upper echelons of
the sport. It’s not just the grueling travel schedule (“It’s a monotonous routine, really,” says Campos. “From the
course to the hotel, and from the hotel
to the course. We go to these beautiful
countries, but we barely ever have the
chance to really visit places.”) but the
fact that the hotels aren’t five-stars and
the flights are coach.

“People don’t realize that we’re paying
for all of these things out of pocket,”
says Campos. “Plane tickets to South
America are expensive and we’re
spending thousands of dollars each
week.”
With resources stretched in, Campos
and other players on the PGA Tour
Latinoamérica are often forced to make
trade-offs and find creative ways to cut
costs. “I might stay at a really bad hotel if it’s close to the course, or sometimes seven or eight of us get together
and rent a house because it’s cheaper,”
he says, an image that does not evoke
‘professional athletes’ so much as ‘college buddies on a road trip.’
As if golf weren’t a tough enough
game, requiring the highest levels of
mental fortitude and concentration,
Campos and his peers have to contend
with the added pressure of knowing
that missing a putt might also mean a
much lesser amount on a much-needed
paycheck.
“I won’t lie: on the tour, we think about
it all the time,” he says. “Guys know
they need to finish in the top-10 at an
event just to cover their expenses.”
Each tournament has a $150,000 total
purse; for his 3rd place finish in Uruguay, Campos took home $8,700, but
his 16th place finish just a few weeks
earlier in Mexico netted him less than
$2,500. In two and a half years on tour
that have included seven top-10 finishes, he has made a total of $63,700.
“There’s not enough money in this tour
to play mediocre; there’s not much margin of error,” he says. Campos is grateful to his family and a few faithful sponsors for helping ensure that there is any
margin at all, and he laments that other
Puerto Rican players have not had the
means to try their luck as touring pros,
even when they’ve had the talent.

Moving Forward
Campos got a welcome financial boost
this March when he tied for 29th at the
PGA TOUR’s 2014 Puerto Rico Open
and took home $21,300—nearly as
much as what he has made in any single
year on the Latin American circu