BMW CHAMPIONSHIP

August 27, 2020

Cameron Champ

Olympia Fields Country Club

Quick Quotes

Q. Cameron, much respect for what you've said and done in regards to racial injustice. Can you talk about your sneakers and what you scrawled on and why?

CAMERON CHAMP: Well, I have Papa Champ on my sneakers, Black Lives Matter and Breonna Taylor. Obviously there are some very important reasons why that's on my shoes. For my grandfather, if anyone knows my story, he grew up in the south, Jim Crow, all those eras through the '60s, '70s and '80s and obviously Breonna Taylor, which is another ongoing issue. For me again that's kind of where I stand with this. I just want to show my love and support and obviously with my hat, as well.

Q. Some people have perhaps twisted Black Lives Matter to mean something else. How do you view the movement?

CAMERON CHAMP: I mean, Black Lives Matter means all lives matter. When people say all lives matter, yes, all lives matter, but so do black lives. It's a situation where, again, as a country, as a whole we've kind of dug ourselves a hole. Now with media and people videotaping and seeing things, it's starting to come alive. People are starting to talk about it, which is the good thing. Without dialogue, without talking about it, nothing is going to happen. And so I think this is -- it's a decent start, but obviously there's still a lot of stuff going on that quite frankly should not be happening at all. And even with Jacob Blake, it's the same thing. I get criticized for doing something, but then when you look at the facts, he's still a human being. Regardless if he has a criminal record, regarding of any of that, he's still a human being, and for me just to watch that video -- again, regardless of what he's done in his past or people saying he had an arrest warrant or he had this, he had that, he's a human being. It just has to end.

Q. What did you think of the decision by the teams MLB NBA to not play and was there any contemplation to not playing today?

CAMERON CHAMP: Yeah, I definitely thought about it for sure, but obviously I feel like I can do a lot more playing, and again, showing my support and expressing myself, and I think that's great for the NBA. I mean, all the guys sticking together, which again, the NBA is -- I don't know the exact numbers, but it's probably around 90 percent are African Americans, so that's their whole organization. So just to see them come together and talk about it and obviously they ended up they're going to continue the season, but just to boycott their last few games, again, I think that's a huge step in all of sports.

Q. Just to build on that, with the NBA it looks a lot different than the PGA TOUR. I just wonder, there's probably a number of players, certainly fans who have a different idea of what Black Lives Matter means. I just wonder if you feel in any way like an outlier when you support this or you wear the shoes and you're the only one here, right? Just how you kind of square that and how you feel about that.

CAMERON CHAMP: Yeah, I mean, it's -- again, I mean, I do to a sense. Like I said, it's a situation where, again, that video I did yesterday, and I've been told what some people have said. I'm like, that's just -- if you don't understand the full view of everything and realize what's going on and realize the statistics with massive incarceration to law and order to war on drugs to statistically speaking there's, what, I think 12 percent of the U.S.'s population is African-American which makes up 33 percent of the incarcerations versus 62 or 63 percent Caucasian and it makes up 30 percent. So how do those numbers add up?

So it's just, again, a topic that again, I'm going to always show my support. Again, it's part of me, it's part of my family, again, with my grandfather who I looked up to more than anyone, and he's the one who I've learned all the knowledge from and kind of fed off, and again, I think it's a good thing we're all talking about it, because again, it's what needs to happen for change to happen.

Q. In respect to what would happen in the other leagues, when you got in today in the locker room, whatever it might be, or just talking with guys, how much chatter was there about it? In some ways it feels like that was happening out there and this was here and those were two very different things.

CAMERON CHAMP: Yeah, there wasn't much. I'm a pretty quiet guy so I kind of stick to myself, but besides my team around me there was really no one else. Again, it's kind of a weird feeling at the same time, but again, I'm just going to stay true to myself and what I believe in and always go with it.