Spiderman Unmasked

Camilo villegas wears a quizzical look as he steps from the scorer's trailer after the second round of the Shell Houston Open. The PGA Tour rookie has just shot an uninspiring 72 on the Tournament course at the Redstone Golf Club, putting him in danger of missing the cut. Yet charging toward him with lights on and microphones extended come four television crews and a team from a satellite radio station. "I shot even par," he confesses to one of the reporters, clearly embarrassed by attention so incommensurate with his play. � "Hey," the interviewer shoots back, "you're a rock star now." � Like the cameras, the exalted status has moved in quickly on Villegas, and the 24-year-old Colombian has been taken by surprise. Five months removed from his only season on the Nationwide tour, Villegas (pronounced Bee-JAY-gas) has become the breakout star of the class of 2006, putting together three top five finishes, including ties for second at the FBR Open and the Ford Championship at Doral--where his final-round duel with Tiger Woods received plenty of airtime--and a tie for third at the Players Championship that left him a stroke short of playing his way into the Masters. During that run Villegas gave golf fans a glimpse of everything he has to offer: the movie-star looks, the ripped biceps, the flashy clothes and the 300-yard drives. What they also saw, over and over again, was the bizarre, arachnid way he crouches to read putts. A strange hybrid of a yoga pose and a push-up, the move has earned Villegas the one thing he was missing: a handle. Now, in his home country, he is known as El Hombre Ara�a--Spiderman.

Rock star, superhero--choose whichever analogy you prefer. The point is, Villegas's play and persona have him poised as a crossover attraction ripe for the MTV crowd and the most beautiful people lists. In one key demographic he has already emerged. All week at Doral, Miami's large Latin American population supplied Villegas with massive galleries, and back home his countrymen flocked to the TV to watch his Sunday tangle with El T�gre in numbers usually reserved for the Colombian national soccer team. Thirty Spanish-speaking journalists showed up for that final round, and the following morning Villegas made the front pages of his homeland's six largest dailies. Because of El Hombre Ara�a, Colombian cable channel City TV has signed on to carry the remainder of the 2006 Tour schedule. "Camilo's impact has been tremendous," says Manuel de la Rosa, the president of the Federaci�n Colombiana de Golf. "He's doing for golf here what Juan Pablo Montoya did for Formula One racing, which was establish a tradition and create a huge following." Amid the jingle of cash registers and the blare of publicity, one question has remained largely unanswered: Who's the kid beneath the mask?

Camilo and his brother, Manuel, 21, a redshirt sophomore at Florida, from which Camilo graduated in 2004, were born to hard-working, middle-class parents, Fernando and Luz Marina Restrepo. They grew up in Medell�n, a city of 2.9 million nestled in the Aburr� valley in Colombia's mountainous coffee-growing region. "We're architects," says Luz. "We've done well at times but also had our share of economic difficulties. If it weren't for our sons' golf [scholarships], we wouldn't have been able to send them to a university in the U.S."

Fernando, an avid sportsman, was Colombia's 1980 national champion in Trials riding, a form of motocross that requires strength and balance. That explains Camilo's first love: BMX biking. When he was about six, he and 14 buddies pooled their money and built a track behind the apartment complex where they lived. Endless wheelies and scraped knees resulted, as did a certain fearlessness and self-confidence that Camilo would carry from the dirt track to the fairway.

His first exposure to golf came the same year he built the track, when he walked hand in hand with his father along the nine-hole Club Campestre de Medell�n, a hilly course in the middle of the city. Camilo didn't play that day, but when he finally picked up a club, he showed the kind of determination that would serve him well later on. "Once when I was playing," Fernando recalls, "Camilo lagged behind in a sand trap and, using a brand-new Ping four-wood he had borrowed from my caddie, he whacked away in the bunker until he had ruined the club." Intrigued by the sport, the intense little kid began tagging along with Rojelio Gonz�lez, the club pro, carrying his towel and water and mimicking his swing.

Under Gonz�lez's tutelage Camilo grew to become a top amateur and traveled the world with Colombia's junior national team. Then Medell�n native Camilo Benedetti, a teammate two years his senior and a member of the golf team at Florida, introduced Villegas to Gators coach Buddy Alexander.

"That was our lucky Colombian connection," says Alexander. During Villegas's freshman season, in 2000-01, the two Camilos fueled Florida's drive to an NCAA championship. Villegas was named first-team All-America and Benedetti made second-team all-SEC. What shocked Alexander about his second Colombian find was Villegas's six-month transformation from scrawny freshman to buff, hard-driving, team-leading sophomore. "He constantly stayed later and did extra work in the weight room," says Alexander. "There were times when I had to get him to tone back on the amount that he was lifting." The coach watched the 5'9" Villegas pack on 20 pounds, to 160. "When he got here, he looked as if he could become a very good player," says Alexander. "But it wasn't until he hit the weight room and got a lot stronger and a lot longer that he became a force."

Villegas was equally obsessive about other parts of his life. He graduated with a major in business, a 3.78 GPA and was a two-time academic All-America. He still lives in Gainesville, where he shares an apartment with Manuel. "When you walk into his closet, you don't see any dirty laundry lying on the floor," Manuel says of his brother. "His pants and shirts are hung neatly in color-coordinated rows, and the hanger hooks are pointed in the same direction." Camilo, who's been asked ad nauseam about his compulsiveness, says simply, "Hey, I like to know where my things are."

Obsessive tendencies can be counterproductive in golf. "Camilo is a perfectionist," says Alexander, who keeps several of Villegas's meticulously crafted college yardage books in his office to show to young Gators golfers. "That's a double-edged sword. He can be too hard on himself." When Villegas walked off the 72nd green after finishing second at February's FBR, he wasn't pumped about his best performance ever. Rather, he was disgusted with his putting. Since then there's been a marked improvement. Before the FBR, Villegas was ranked 144th on Tour in putting average. Today he's improved to 83rd. "Now I try to be creative and have a nice flow when I get on the green," Villegas says. If he can get the putter working, there's no limit for Villegas, as he ranks fourth in driving distance (307.7 yards), behind fellow rookie phenoms Bubba Watson (318.5) and J.B. Holmes (310.8), and Tag Ridings (309.2). He is also a skilled shot maker. "Camilo has a short, compact swing," says Alexander. "He hasn't had a whole lot of instruction, so [his technique is] not very complicated or technical."

Like any good superhero, Villegas has a bold Spiderman trait to offset every mild-mannered Peter Parker tic. He may color-coordinate his belt with his shoes in the privacy of his bedroom, but on the course there's nothing button-down about him. As he puts it, "I like to go at pins." Some observers feel Villegas could benefit from toning down his aggressive play, but that's not in his nature.