Driven
Charlotte Campbell ’06 wins Golf Channel’s Highway 18
By Warren Miller ’90MBA
Professional golfer and former Rollins standout Charlotte Campbell ’06
recently won a competition on the Golf Channel’s reality show Highway
18. Charlotte and her brother, Rob, bested four other
two-person teams in a wild competition that included rally-style car
driving, racing on foot while carrying a full set of clubs and bag,
answering golf trivia questions for Arnold Palmer, and—sandwiched in
between—actual golf on a dozen different courses. For their efforts, the
Campbell team won $50,000 in cash, $50,000 worth of travel from Orbitz,
a GPS system, and Titleist clubs and balls.
“Everything that you saw on television was real,” Campbell said. “I
thought the editors did a great job of showing who we were.” Campbell’s
former coach and mentor at Rollins, Women’s Golf Coach Julie Garner, agreed. “They
captured her perfectly,” Garner said. “You could see and feel her
competitive intensity. ‘We are back in it!’ she said on camera. That’s
Charlotte, all right. If you need someone to make a putt or birdie,
she’s the one you want to have.”
The win comes at a good time for Campbell, who struggled during her
second year on the Duramed FUTURES Tour, the LPGA’s development tour.
She finished the year ranked 116th and will have to play in a qualifying
tournament to regain her exempt status (eligibility to enter all
events) for the 2009 season. “Playing in the pros is not easy,” she
said. “It’s a whole new level of competition. I had a really good career
in college, but so did the other 144 girls I tee it up with every
week.”
Garner has no doubt that Campbell will recover the confidence and
“swagger” she had as a four-time NCAA Division II Player of the Year
during her Rollins career. “I’ve watched her play since her high school
days, and she has that burning desire,” Garner said. “She stalks a putt
like Tiger Woods does.”
