Jose Campra

Sebastian Munos, who plays his golf on live. But Jose is also he played college golf in America, won the Argentinian AM So he's a very very good player and an incredible instructor and he has been working this past year with Camilla Vijegas and Camillo just got his first

win in almost a decade. Jose was a big part of that and I wanted to get him on and again, not somebody that maybe everybody knows about, but I think one of the jobs that that I want to do with this podcast is bring you guys some different stories,

maybe some stuff that you didn't know. And I think with all of the crazy stuff going on in the golf landscape at the professional level right now, there's a lot of negative things, but to me, you've got a guy that's Argentinian caddying professionally, working with a player that's just won a PGA Tour event. I can't think of a better feel good story. So I'm really excited for everybody to get a chance to listen to Jose and it's a really, really good one. Enjoy.

teaching and trying to learn. I mean, one time, I even want to shadow you and your dad for yeah, you came. You came in that time here Florida exactly exactly, and that was probably ten, I don't even know, ten twelve years ago, and that's kind of how I did it through the years. And going back to Camillo, Yes, we know each other for a long time. He's two years younger than me. We play a lot of junior golf together. Because he was a superstar. He was two

years younger. He was beating us, so I mean, so I had to I play some golf with him, and then I lost track of him. He went to Florida and he started to be a superstar. But you know, after some time, when I went to caddy for Cabret in twenty thirteen, I started hanging out with him again. So I've been seeing him for the last ten years. We have a great relationship, but it didn't come up until Torri Pines is year in Farmers So you know, I see him through the years playing golf, you know,

kind of struggling with his game. But I would never ever make a comment, you know, we'll hang up for the inner stuff that I never make a comedy of golf. Everything would be some other subject. And I guess you know. The week of Tori, I was Alsebastian. We both off musicat we play in the same wave and I go back to the caddy Launchentorian there he is hit them balls and he reached out to me. He called me and he said, look, man, are you willing to help me?

And that's where that's where it all started.

of things happening. He's you know, professional life and also you know, personal life, and you know that, you know, it was really hard for him, you know, but like what he said, you know, I think the main thing for him was he never stopped working up early and you know, and trying. I told him, look, we have a plan. If you're going to stick to this, this is gonna take some time, I said. I like giving

my students a dayline. So I told him, look for you to be competitive again, it might take you close to an year. So I mean, are you willing? He said, yes, I'll do it. So when we started saying, you called me twice a week because I'm away with Sebastian, I don't have a lot of time to see you in person, and I need to make sure I can keep you. Your confidence level has to stay the same because I have to keep him motivated in the progress, in the process.

I thought, you know, if we play some bad courses for him and he should sober eighty, he's done, he's out, so you know, but obviously Camilla wanted to play a lot. He played. I remember the week before Hunt, I told him, please play home and obviously, you know, it was it was not the best week for him. But but I could see, you know, through time that he started getting it,

knowing what the main things were. He started peeoting better, lo opened with every club, started getting you know, in front of him, the path face and path started getting you know, more too left, and I started seeing his like his person started to be a lot less right. So once we got that, then he kept competing on the contrary, and we kind of you know how Camdo has always been like really short on the backswing.

come a load in curbing life. So once he started developing and getting to understand how to people better and cleaning out a lot of the sliding with the hips, then we started doing a lot of Remember how Big used to do, like long swings, long swings, a lot

of mobility. We started doing a lot of that because I started seeing how from him being able to do longer swings, then his pelvis started to kill better in the first part of the down screen, and obviously from here from then on he started getting how he could, like usual, to grown better and started getting better out of it. So you know, it took, like I said, it took a good six seven months for him to

kind of understand the whole picture. And through the process we went through a lot of different drills that kind of get him where we wanted to. And I don't know by August Claude, I remember going to his house and telling him I think we're gonna play the Masters again, and he looked at me and said, all your horses. He said, we need to win, and I said, I think we can do it. I mean, because it gets to a point cloud for me where I knew it was going to be. Is he able to go through

the big changes early on? And once he starts getting it, I need to wait for all this car tissues to go away.

one in the water. And you know. Camillo is the type of player to where he had a tremendous amount of success very early in his career. I mean, he was one of the top ten best player in the world. He was a guy that a lot of people thought had, you know, the type of game and the type of swagger that he could compete in big tournaments. And then he goes, you know, almost nine years of not winning

the score tissue on the golf course. And you see it from both standpoints, which I think is really interesting because you see from an instruction standpoint, but then obviously being a full time caddy, you understand how difficult it can be sometimes to take what you're doing on the driving range and take it to the golf course exactly.

to make a cat, not to win. It's different. And he's been on that position, fighting for cats for the last seven eight years, and he will get out of the cut line and there it goes, you know that that cook or wave right comes out, and you know it just it feels like someone hits you in the head with the hammer, and you know how, you start

all over again next week. So I kind of knew when I started seeing, you know, the progress on his golf in that the next step was to you know, get that out of the system, and slowly started to get better. I went to Jupiter, you know, maybe three times the last two months, and I was there right before Mexico and and man those two days after we played Miami before Mexico or unbelievable. We did a lot

of work. We did a lot of work. I like to take him after we do some of the mechanic work I like to do and put him in course like course conditions, like I would take him out to the to the ferry bankers just to do low poond drills, you know, just to make sure the low po is some you know, in a good spot. Then I would take him out on any of the courses there in Jupiter and get that left right wing with trouble left, and I go, go and ask him to hit me ten twenty balls. Just I need you to ride with

the win. I don't need you if I just ride the wind, which is totally opposite of what he's been doing and seeing himself for the last ten years. So you know, I needed him to get himself in a position on the course, on the practice range where he could actually feel, well he's gonna feel when he gets under pressure again. And he's just been great, you know, he's just you know, he was always willing to do it. He was always in a good spirits to do it.

Even though club. Two weeks ago, when I went to see in Miami, he told me, I'm playing second stage.

Does all of that happen or is this one of those weird ones?

And you know, the first person I called, the first person I called when he won, it was his brother Money. Money works for Man.

calls Money. Sitting next to me. He goes, well, I just got in in Tory Pines and Manny goes, like, I think he should stay playing the corn ferr events, and he said no, no, no, I'm gonna go. And Manny's looking at me and said Tory the South course, the way he's driving the wall, and and you know, he goes to Torry Pines and all of a sudden he starts working with me and he goes, he's gonna he's gonna say that he needed to go there just to start working. This all happened because he made the

right decision. You know, like you know everything, you know the timing it happens for some reason. It was crazy.

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your daily health and fitness regiment. You mentioned a couple of times low point and it's a phrase you know that we use an instruction from a you know, from a launch bonder standpoint. But for everyone listening, explain what kind of you think and feel low point is and how that can affect players and they're shots.

the ball. With the drivers the only club that we wanted to be before the ball because we we're in most cases hitting up on it, some players hit down on it doesn't matter, but I mean in the in an ideal situation, we want the lobo to be before. But also at the same time, the logo can affect or can tell us which way is the direction of the swing moving Again, in the semi circle, if the lopo is too far back, it's probably because it's the swing is moving too far to the right. So that

was the the case to Camille. If we go to the amateurs and you know, we see most of the slicers, you know, on the range, most of them have the lobo way forward with the swing movie maybe eight ten, nine degrees to left. And obviously that's a result of something that happened way earlier. But that's a description, you know, where the club is hitting in relation to the ball

and which direction the swing is moving. Also, we need to understand and for the guys listening out there, is that the lopo for Camillo cannot be the same as the average golfer, even though he wants it with an iron front, because of the speed they can create. So you can only get the loco so far forward if you can create certain other speed, because otherwise the ball

will never launch. So, I mean there's a lot into teaching and into knowing, you know, which which way the player can move and what the conditions and the speed that he can get in order to create that optimal ball flight. So that's kind of the way we went. So it was it was everything. At the beginning, it

was people related everything. We needed to get that kelvis stop sliding and moving more like tilted more in the first part of the down swing, and after that cloud and once he started mastering that and getting the bath and lope on, we started to understand or he started to get out from here, I can start you know, extending and you know, you know, getting more out of the ground and getting that that shaft to a line better, which started helping him to launch the ball.

then is getting more. So was it how much longer is his golf swing now or is it just a feeling for Camillo that you said, Okay, just feel it's a little bit longer. It's not actually really longer.

I did saw in Mexico, especially a few T shirts that I think they were like down win where he was trying to go at it where he actually did look longer, only with the driver, not with the irons, but for him, for him he feels when he's out there, especially when he goes back to the range after playing around. The main thing that he is on it right now is to feel like he adds a lot of mobility to his you know, pelvis and torso whatever to try to get that club to travel even longer throughout the box,

because that's that's what for him. It gives to the best feels to get all the other stuff that we talked earlier.

how to win. The problem is if you don't put yourself in a position to win, it doesn't matter if you want to bunch and still remember. And I think this is a really good example of Camillo Mexico. He gets in the hunt. He finished this second, but he had a chance to win that golf tournament, didn't get it done. But you know that for a guy like Camillo who's won before, he's thinking, Okay, I haven't forgotten how to play. I haven't forgotten how to feel this.

I just have to get myself in this position more often. I mean, if you look at the great players Jose, they make it look easy, right, Rory Tiger, John Rahm, DJ Scotti, Sheffer, They're like, well, they win a lot. But one of the reasons they do that is they put themselves in position they're always in. They're always on the leaderboard on Sunday, right, those guys are always on the leaderboard, so you can sometimes kind of backdoor top tens, back door five by just hanging around and playing decent

on Sunday. But I kind of thought that after the

first two rounds. I thought Saturday's round for Camillo and Been was really really big, right, because it's easy to freewheel it on Thursday and Friday, right, but that Saturday round is always I mean, it's a cliche, but it is moving day because you put yourself, you know, in one of the last two groups on Saturday, after shooting two rounds in the sixties, and then you shoot even parr fifteen to twenty guys go past you, and now you have to go back out on Sunday and say, okay,

now I have to go out and really press and go try and shoot something really low. So I thought the round that Camillo had on Saturday showed a lot of maturity, but it also kind of showed that he felt like he could win again.

had to do it. If you look, if you look back at Sunday in Bermuda, one of the things that I was most impressed the way he walked, the way he handled the course. You don't see and I've been cutting for fifteen years. I've been in final groups as cutting many times, so I've been really close to them, and you don't see guys under the gun walking that way when you're having won in ten years. It's like

he knows something that I don't know. You know, it's like and he told me once eighteen holes on a Sunday. I mean, it is long, especially when you're in the lead and you know and you have to know that you're going to go through goods and bads, and the key and the bat is not only from you playing, but it can be from you playing really good and getting the soft two and three in front. But you get to know that you have to stay the same because eventually, with two three holes to go, you're going

to have that chance. But if you don't stay the same, the chance is going to be gone with six seven holes to go. So you just I mean the guy, like you said, some of these guys, even though Camillo in a percentage way, it doesn't have you know, you know, in twenty tournaments a year, he doesn't get in contention ten. He probably will get one or two or three. But once he gets on it, he knows how to close it. And that's something Claude, you know, that's something you cannot teach.

You know what it takes. So for a guy like Camillo, even though he hasn't won in almost a decade, you know, he goes down and finds some rhythm and finds some stuff, gets himself in the hunt in Mexico, and then goes to Bermuda and gets himself in the hunt again on the weekend. So now he's got a two year exemption. He's going to be in all of the stuff. This is kind of a new lease on life for Camilla.

I mean, he is, I mean, Camilla is just I mean the things that you know, losing a child, the things that he and his wife have gone had to go through their lovely daughter Mia, and all the devastation emotionally to get this win now at this stage of his career and at the end of the year, I think the cool thing is he got this kind of right at the end of the season, and so he bookmarks the end of the season with a win and now can say, Okay, I've got next year. I'm gonna

be playing in majors again. I'm playing in the Masters, I'm gonna be playing in tournaments. I don't have to worry about bouncing back and forth like he was doing. Where Camillo is always a fan favorite, right, He's gonna get sponsors, invites. But like you said, I mean, he's in Mexico, he's playing Latin America and gets a sponsors invite and doesn't really end up getting to Tory Pines, you know, like he normally would on a Sunday night and practice, but now he's not gonna have to do anything.

So what do you feel like is the kind of the landscape for Camillo? I mean, could we see him kind of have this second part of his career now, Because listen, it's easier to win big events first and foremost. You're in the big events, you know, I mean, if you're top fifty in the world, I mean the Holy Grail before live and you know, now the world rankings

kind of becoming a little bit of a farce. But the goal pre lib was always top fifty in the world because you knew if you were top fifty you were going to play in all the real golf tournaments that mattered, Right, You're going to play in all the majors, You're going to play in all the big stuff in

the US. You probably if your top fifty could get invites to go play all the big stuff outside the US, right, So for a guy like Camillo, do you think that, I mean, he's always been, you know, an incredibly hard worker. He's always been a grinder. What do you think this does for the next phase of his career, in the next phase of his life.

know how they are. I mean, he said to me, I didn't feel great, he didn't feel perfect as a Camello. It doesn't need to feel perfect. It's a lot better than I used to be. And you prove yourself you can compete, so go and play again. So that was, you know, that was mainly what we talked on Wednesday night before Bermuda, after Mexico, and then he called me Sunday. It was very emotional. I was here on my own watching it I got, you know, I cried for you know,

a good ten minutes. I couldn't believe it, and the phone got crazy, and I left my house. I went to the kids too, to play with the kids, and I left the phone and I came back after two hours and at the moment I gave in my house, he's calling me. And he called me and it was mainly a celebration kind of thing. We did it, you know, blah blah blah, And I said, know, enjoy, get some rest. He's going to play our sam And I'm just thinking

on my own. I haven't spoke to him, but I think everything has to do now on with expectations, you know, Claude. I mean, we got to be realistic. Obviously, we want to play in the majures. He knows how to play the majors. He's probably played more than twenty majors. But we got to set up I think for him it will be key to set up a good schedule, which he can do now. Stay, you know, understand what the

baseline is. One thing that I want to do right now is see where he is a saying, okay, these are the numbers we kind of get if we do some kind of studying this all your body's moving, that's where you're praying your best. This is kind of where we're not going to do more much more mechanical work. We're just going to try to go back to where you've been your best and from then. Honest, if I have to say something about his game that I would love to be able to work some is the same

that we've been doing about mobility. I would love to be able to get Camillo to probably move one or two miles a little faster, and the rest is get out there and you know, have our expectations. Never forget what happened the last ten years, so we can the next ten years. We can you know, we can compete because at the end of the day, you know, I gave him confidence. I told him he could win. But inside of ego, Claude, my goal was I want to get this guy to feel competitive again. If he wins

or not, it will be a destiny, you know. But that was the main goal. That he can go out and feel that he can beat the guys out there. So I mean, that's that's that's it. I mean, it's just let's see what the next ten years bring about. He told me one day when we were struggling after one months of work, and I said, look, you have to do this for a living. I mean, you really need the money. And he looked at me and said, no, Luckily I've been doing I've done good and you know

I'm smart with money. Or I said, you know, we need to commit. We need to do this hundred percent and we're going to get on the right path. So I kind of earn his trust on that way, and we had a really good plan that he could have work or not, blood it ended up working. We go lucky that it worked. I guess we did things the right way, but you know, I could have got any other way. And never forget what we were in Ferrrie. I mean that's a key. Not forget what we were

in Ferie. I mean we were low, low, low. So now we got to really manage our affectations and know what we can be capable of and just enjoy the next few years feeling competitive. That's that's it.

opposed to a negative. Right, it can be a way that the player has to take a little bit more owner ownership so club.

hit some bad shots. And I think, you know, the other day, I was listening to Brooks in one of his and social media whatever it was I interviewed that he gave and he he's so good about it. He was talking about, you know, I gave him, I gave a game of mistakes and how you know, he he you know, he tried to manage himself the best he can and he knows he's gonna miss some here and there. But he I mean, he's not trying to hit a

bad shot and it just happens. And I thinks the you know, the fact that the that the coach is there all the time, he can you know, it could it could be worse.

sometimes we find ourselves overdoing things. And I've been with him for two years. I don't think we've ever been on the range after a round. Never in two years. He's like, okay, but I hate the worst. I'll figure out tomorrow morning.

looking at me shaking his head. But it's an attribute to not beat yourself up, to not get down on yourself, you know, Brooks's caddy, Ricky Elliott, there have been Brooks always wants to go to the driving range after a round of golf, just to talk. It's kind of what he does. Like It's like you said, a lot of this stuff with players from a coaching standpoint and from

a caddy standpoint, everybody's different. And a lot of times Brooks wants to go to the range if he's shut sixty six and hit balls, and then it's always Ricky Elliott that will say, like, Brooks will hit one bad, a couple bad shots, he's just shut sixty six, he's hitting it great, he's leading. He'll hit a couple bad

shots and he'll kind of go into grind mode. And Ricky will always be the one that will say, hey, can we go home and get off the range now, because the longer we stand here, we can only mess this up. Because we can always find things to work on. We always finds out. I think it's so important for everyone listening to realize that you're the quest to improve your golf swing and to work on your mechanics is

never ending. But you can you can just go down a rabbit hole to where and and sometimes hose I'll talk to some of the juniors and say, listen, what do you do when you play badly? Oh? I go to the range for somebody, do you ever just go home and just go watch TV and relax? And they're like, I never even think about doing that. But sometimes you've just you've got a bad day at the office and you just say, hey, listen, I'm just gonna I know what I need to do. I just didn't make some

good swings today. I didn't have it, And so about you're right, I don't. I never see Sebastian at the range after the rounds.

What do you heat driver? Here? Wait? I mean there's so much about what's behind it eighty five that is not so much related to the golf stream, but how bad they play the game, and they always for some reason always I gotta go to range, I gotta hit balls I got and I mean, obviously we've been long enough to be able to understand all the areas, so we kind of know. You know, this guy shot seventy two,

but it was the ballstricker was actually not bad. It was pretty good out there, So there's not really no need for us to be an hour and a half on the range just pounding balls. And like you said, it can only get worse.

He's hitting balls and I'm throwing balls with the driver, and all of a sudden someone puts his arm here and I turn around and his tyoods and I never seen tyr roods before that, and I'm like, whoa and the guy. Honestly, every after that time, I remember twenty thirteen and I carried for him, I think eight more months whenever they both were on the field. If Tiger was on the same way, he will stop and watch him three four or five t shirts drivers on the range.

And I haven't seen that through the years for many players. I mean you Alaly, you only see the top players watch others when there's really something, you know, different, excellence.

you know, the things that everybody kind of knows. But you know that he took for granted, there's only a few guys that played good goal for twenty plus years. Only you can name Dustin Tiger, Sergio angele Is on those, you know, twenty years hitting the ball that good. It's very hard because you go through personal issues, changing coaches, health issues, whatever, whatever, and you get out of that

top fifty that you named before. This guy was that good for that many years hitting the ball the same. I mean that's why you know how many I think he had like three Sunday last rounds at the Masters for five years. I mean it's and he's I mean there's only one tire Woods, only one that's it, right, So I mean to be able to do that tells you that the guy, you know, he was a flasher. But also he was ready for the big scenarios. He

was always ready for the big scenarios. He was just waiting for those weeks.

And you know, for me it was huge coming from Argentina, have a chance to work on the PGA tour and then for a year and a half Cloud he was the one that taught me how to carry I mean, I knew when I got to him first of all, with his character and all that, believe me or not, I was kind of scared. You know, how am I? How am I going to tell this guy is not a seven iron? I'm not supposed to do that, you know.

And then you know, I remember after a few weeks he was trying me, and then he goes, look, just be quiet and answer what I ask him, and we will go through fifteen hosts with nothing club I would say, one night eve of the rug that's it, that's it, that's it. And then I mean his questions were so hard because he was like, you think at seven is enough, and it's like, hold on, hold on, are we going to pitch it how much? When you got you know it's bad. So I'm a big fan and I'm very

thankful for everything he's done for me. And as soon as you get out, I text him, he text me back. We got on a call. We spoke on the last two months, maybe two times, three times, and I see him out on our golf course, and I know the guy is trying. He wants to get back. I know the other day I was with the Pink reps and they told me they sent him some new stuff for him to try. And I know the goal is for him to be back in twenty fourteen. Claude, with all this story going on, I just care for him to

be able to go back and play golf. Will win or not. I mean, I'll be you know, kind of like Camillo's story. But I mean him just starting to get competitive and having a calendar, just that will be huge for him.

Carlos Ortiz. You know, a bunch of the guys that play on live. There's a bunch of really good players now coming out of South America, Latin America. Why do you think we've seen this like there's a lot of good players now.

on Sunday. That was about it, you know. And if we were getting good players, the players were playing in the Argentina Tour in South America, but playing in the PGA Tour or being in the US felt like so distant, like so hard to do. Now technology being able to you know, I'm talking to a guy right now who is in Jupiter, and I'm in Cortl, Argentina and that's our you know, and so now we can go out there, we can go, we can travel, we can play junior events.

Now every kid that is decent they go to college in the States. That never happened before, and that's huge because now now you go to college in the States, you get to play an acc SEC school and all of a sudden, you're playing with the next organ speed. So next time you play with him or you see him, you're not afraid, you're not scared. You play with him before you know he's got two arms to two and two legs like I do, so I can beat him.

So a lot of it has to do that, you know, us being able from you know, from Mexico and South you know, starting to get closer to the US system, which is, you know, the top level that you can actually dream of. We get it close, you know, on an earlier stage of our life. So that's what you know. Every one of them, I mean Grilla went to a MG Academy. Colors artist Sava North Texas, Huaco, well he was a superstar, but most of them they also went through a college and also going back to the to

the instruction and Standpoint Club. I think the last ten years with social media with US, I was lucky because I was working on tour, but being able to approach guys like you and most of the coaches on the PGA Tour have a chance to shadow. That's something that has no I mean, the amount of value on that is unreal. And then you can you can share your that knowledge down here, so you know, it's just small things.

But at the same time, the fact that we can work closer to you guys, we're closer to the makeup golf is that you know, it's contagious.

in South America? And I said, I think Buenasari will be the right place.

And I think Camillo definitely owes you a decent bottle of red wine for sure.

We're live in eh and we're lucky enough to have a chance to be around these guys, and you know, I'm just very thankful to have the opportunity, like I said with Camino, So thanks to you club.

him and Camillo getting a much needed win. I want to thank everybody for listening. Son of a Butch comes to you every Wednesday. We'll see you next week.