The Comeback
After making a two-foot putt on the 72nd hole of the Butterfield Bermuda Championship in November, Camilo Villegas raised his face to the sky. Villegas had just won his first tournament on the PGA Tour in more than nine years. He had to thank someone.
“I thanked Mia for inspiring us,” he says in a whisper.
It had been nine years of non-competitive, frustrating and depressing golf for Villegas, a stretch in which he lost his PGA Tour privileges on more than one occasion and was playing on the Korn Ferry Tour.
And he was three years past the ultimate tragedy of losing his 22-month-old daughter Mia to pediatric cancer in 2020. Now, Villegas had lifted himself from dark places and was in the bright lights once again.
“This game has given me so many great things, but in the process it kicks your butt,” says Villegas. “Life has given me so many great things and in the process it kicks my butt, too.”
But for two weeks this fall, Villegas discovered something that allowed him to kick back. Out of literally nowhere, Villegas finished in a tie for second at the World Wide Technology Championship in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. He was near the lead and held it for much of the tournament, pushed to second after Erik van Rooyen made eagle on the 72nd hole. His disappointment with missing out on victory was trumped by the satisfaction of returning to form in a tournament, one that required him to ask for a sponsor’s exemption merely to play. He had also gotten a sponsor’s exemption to play the following week in Bermuda, and his good form held.
Villegas shot 67-63-65 over the first three rounds and then began Sunday on fire, birdieing four of his first seven holes to grab the lead from Alex Norén at the Port Royal Golf Course, a lead he would not give up, shooting a final round of 65.
After the second round, he told an interviewer of the travails of the game.
“Let me be honest, let’s tell the viewer out there, people think that we just kind of chill out here and we’re very comfortable doing what we’re doing,” Villegas said. “There’s a lot of demons out here and when you’ve been doing it for a long time, golf is hard.”
Villegas started playing Tour golf in 2004 after four All-American years at the University of Florida. When he gained full status on the Tour in 2006, a series of high leaderboard finishes created a buzz that surrounded this young, handsome, electric, charismatic and stylish Colombian. Tiger Woods was still the Tour’s major force and Phil Mickelson a major fan favorite. But Villegas’ presence was impossible to ignore, including what had become a signature part of his game, the “Spiderman” posture where he contorted his body to lie nearly flat behind a ball to read putts in an athletic position that made him look almost superhuman. Cigar Aficionado put him on the cover in August 2006.
“He’s going to be an international superstar,” said Doral tournament director Eddie Carbone at the time.
“He’s going to reach out to the Spanish-speaking people around the world. Everybody’s going to know who this kid is. He’s special.” Villegas attracted vast numbers of new fans to the event. “His impact on our tournament was sensational,” Carbone continued. “I had people from Colombia e-mailing, calling, wanting to make sure that he was in the field because they wanted to come up from Colombia to watch him play.”
In 2008, it looked like Villegas had arrived at the mountaintop of the game. On successive weeks he won the BMW Championship and the Tour Championships, beating out Woods and all the rest of the Tour’s elite. He followed that up with a win at the 2010 Honda Classic. But not long after that, things began going south for him. Despite winning the 2014 Wyndham Championship, he started losing control of his game, then started having shoulder problems.
And then came the devastation of losing Mia in 2020. His decline was hitting a nadir.
“I think it’s a slow process,” Villegas says, describing the dismantling of his game. “I think the way I swung the golf club wasn’t ideal with the changes in technology.” Balls were spinning less, he explains, while clubs were imparting less spin. He tried—unsuccessfully—to adjust. “I used to hit a pretty low ball flight. I think a higher fade was more favorable for what players were trying to do. Not to blame it on the technology, but I started manipulating to compensate for these changes and then you start playing not great golf and you get frustrated and mentally you become a little bit weaker. Then I have a shoulder injury and it’s bugging me and interfering with my practice and my preparation.”
Add to that the unimaginable grief of losing his daughter.
“Then comes our situation with Mia,” he says. “You start adding all this stuff and the negative snowball keeps growing and growing.”
Ernie Els, who had developed a friendship with Villegas and his wife Maria Ochoa through the Bear’s Club in Florida, re encountering Villegas and his then-caddie brother Manuel at the Travelers tournament in Hartford, Connecticut, when Camilo was on a distinct downslide.
“They were very down and I said what’s up, man? He’s a great competitor. But he’s saying man, I don’t want to do this anymore,” says Els. “I said Camilo, I feel for you but some of us are just born to play this game. There’s nothing much else we were put on this planet to do but doing what we are doing and that’s playing professional golf. I could see a light go on a little bit. Those are tough times when you are that down.”
After Mia’s death, Els essentially told Villegas that golf was what he was meant to do. And trying to turn that tragic death into something positive, Villegas and his wife founded the Mia’s Miracles program through the Camilo Villegas Foundation to help parents cope with critically ill children.
“I said it when I lost Mia, I said it my whole life, when you try to do things the right way and you respect others, people send you good energy,” says Villegas. “Going through Mia’s experience was pretty unique. When we shared what we were going through, people felt like they were a part of it. Putting together Mia’s Miracles, people saw that we were trying to turn a very negative story into something positive. That’s what creates this energy.”
Energy was also what was needed for his game. His wife told him he needed to revive his ion for golf, and at the start of 2023 Villegas began a major overhaul of his game with a chance encounter and conversation with Jose Campra, an old friend from Argentina who he grew up with playing junior golf in South America. Campra is a pro who was caddying for Sebástian Muñoz on the PGA Tour. Campra also teaches several tour level pros in the States and Latin America. They ran into one another on the driving range of the Farmers Insurance Open in San Diego after Villegas had missed yet another cut.
“He came to say hi and Muñoz was going to LIV and we didn’t know when we would see each other again,” says Villegas. “I asked him if he could help me. He said I’ve studied your swing forever and yes I believe I can help you, but I just can’t give you a couple of tips to make your game better. We are going to have to take time and make drastic changes. You are going to play worse before you play better and it’s going to be emotionally tough.”
Villegas was dubious at first. “I said that’s exactly what I don’t want to hear. He said this could be a gamble for you, but I truly believe this could make the game of golf easier for you.”
Villegas is 41, and while his long, flowing locks have been replaced by tightly cropped hair—and you might see a wrinkle or two around his eyes—he still has that ripped, athletic look that he sported during his early, heady days when he was the star of the PGA Tour. He’s never been one to shun the hard work to stay in shape or play the game, and putting full trust in his old friend, Villegas embarked on a swing makeover that would turn his low-bullet draws into high fades.
“He told me he didn’t want me to play too much. Everything I heard from him was not what I wanted to hear, but with work ethic and discipline and sticking to the process through some really tough months at the beginning of the year, things started to work. I added a new mental guy from Chile, Eugenio Lisama, and a new caddie, Luis Ruiz.”
Nothing came easy. During the process, Villegas decided to take a stab at television, serving as a color analyst for Golf Channel’s broadcast of the Wyndham Championship in August. “The reality is that I am getting older,” he says. “You don’t see too many 40-somethings winning on the PGA Tour. I have been struggling first with an injury and then trying to get back into top form . . . They are seeing your career wind down a little bit—but your heart doesn’t want it that way; you want to keep competing.”
But the changes started to click, the putts started to drop and finally Villegas was a winner again, gathering all the perks that come with it besides a big check. He’s now exempt on Tour for two years, gets a spot in The Players, an invitation to the Masters and the PGA Championship. And psychologically, he has a sense of belonging to the top echelon of the game again.
Through it all, the man has found an inner peace. “My wife asked me a question a couple months [ago]: Why are you so calm?” he says. “I wasn’t sure when that was going to come, but there was some inner peace in me. Hey, if it doesn’t work, I have given it my best.”
“I’m so proud to see that he’s come all the way around and being a winner now,” says Els. “To be Camilo Villegas again. It’s really life changing now. It gives him time to really reflect. There’s a lot of pressure off now. He can really have a schedule now and really be the family man he’s always wanted to be. It’s hard to be a family man when you have so much stress and your job security is not quite there. For him to have that, I think you are really going to see a really great Camilo again.”
There’s a lot for Villegas to love. Perhaps the best perk will be his return to the Masters, this time with his son Mateo.
“I’m going to love it being there on the Par 3 Tournament with my little one,” says Villegas. “It will be a dream come true.”
