Peter Williams: Absence of tournament play key to Cambo's slump

Here are some sobering numbers for the US Open champion. Nearly a third of the year has gone. Since January 1, Michael Campbell has played just 13 rounds of tournament golf. He hasn't broken 70 in any of them. His scoring average is an uninspiring 73.16. His world ranking has slipped from 13th to 26th and going further south every week.

He's played six tournaments and hasn't made a cut when there's been one. Take away his fourth equal at the Mercedes Championships in Hawaii in the first week of the year and his official finishing positions are between 33rd equal (in a 64-strong matchplay field) and 104th equal in a full field at the Johnnie Walker Classic in Perth. They are not befitting of a reigning major champion.

Yet Campbell won't play another tournament until the British Masters starts at The Belfry on May 11. He maintains he's happy with the schedule mapped out at the start of the year but it's hard to believe he wouldn't be better off playing some competitive golf now rather than having a holiday with his family on the Gold Coast.

The problem is finding somewhere to play. The European Tour is in China again this week, then in Spain and Italy before reaching Britain for the first time at The Belfry.

The restriction by the US PGA Tour which limits Campbell to just 10 tournaments a year is not doing him any favours either. After playing five events in America already, he's only got the remaining three majors and two World Golf Championship events left. Of those five tournaments, ironically two are in England anyway.

So the stretch of tournaments he plays from the British Masters through until the Wales Open in early June will be his first concerted period of tournament play for the year. He'll have four successive weeks on the road through Britain and Ireland but won't play in the United States again till the US Open at Winged Foot in New York.

It is a very strange way to prepare for the year's second major. Has any reigning major champion in history ever been so restricted in where he can play in the lead-up to defending a US Open title ?

While the attitude of the US PGA Tour is unnecessarily protectionist, Campbell has brought the situation on himself by refusing to join the Tour, as players like Ernie Els and Padraig Harrington have done, and by scarpering when things went bad for him in America during his nightmare run in 2003.

Those are his choices but now he's made life difficult for himself. The fact remains that he has not played enough golf this year. A schedule that has just six tournaments between January and the second week of May is extraordinarily light.

Among Campbell's contemporaries in the upper echelons of the world rankings, Angel Cabrera has played eight events already this year, Adam Scott seven and Colin Montgomerie will have teed it up in nine tournaments when the British Masters starts.

Those who follow Campbell's career know never to expect long periods of consistency. His 13 years as a professional have produced bursts of sustained brilliance and times of depressing lows. This is not a time of absolute despair. His last two missed cuts have been by just one shot. But you can't help but wonder if he'd find form if he just played a few more tournaments.