Cameron Champ
Making a Gesture
During a week when the sports world stopped, the PGA Tour played on. The Milwaukee Bucks had protested a playoff game in the wake of a police shooting of a Black man in Kenosha, Wis., and the rest of the NBA followed, as did athletes from MLB, MLS, WNBA and WTA. Although the tour’s BMW Championship decided to forge ahead, Cam Champ, one of just four players with Black heritage, decided his voice needed to be heard. “It’s just spreading awareness and sticking by what I believe in and what I believe needs to be changed,” Champ says. “I’ve seen a bunch of other athletes speak out about it. It’s a situation where people don’t want to talk about it, which I get, but at the same time it’s reality. It’s what we live in.” Which is why the 25-year-old wore two different colored shoes, one black and one white, at Olympia Fields, with “BLM”—the initials for Black Lives Matter—inscribed on the midsole. Though the gesture was small, it was the first time in 2020 that a player on the PGA Tour openly supported the social justice movement on his apparel. “People ignore it for so long, and then it gets to a point where it just blows up,” Champ says. “This is just the tip of the iceberg. Change needs to happen. I feel like it’s going in the right direction, but again, with all the stuff that’s going on, it has to end.” —Joel Beall