There are a few things Cameron Young has never done on the PGA Tour, and the most glaring is “win.” That’s a fairly well-known shortcoming—there are many who consider him up there with Tommy Fleetwood as the best current players without a tour win—but what you might not know is that until Saturday, he had never held a 54-hole lead. That’s a bit more surprising because of the other well-trodden fact about Young: He’s finished second seven times.

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Young ended one drought on Saturday at the Wyndham Championship, posting a five-under 65 at Sedgefield Country Club to take the 54-hole lead at the regular season tour finale. He’s five strokes ahead of Colombia’s Nico Echavarria and eight clear of the trio in third place—Chris Kirk, Aaron Rai, and Mac Meissner. Young can end the other drought on Sunday by capturing his first win, and to call it his best chance yet is a massive understatement. At this point, it feels very much like Young can only beat himself.

Following rounds of 63 and 62 to start the tournament, Young wasted no time pressing his advantage, making four straight birdies starting at the third hole. Every part of his game was working, but the putter was the true star of the show; Young buried putts of seven feet, 15 feet, and 32 feet in that stretch.

He cooled off considerably after that, making seven straight pars followed by his only bogey of the day (and only his second of the tournament) on 14. But just when it looked like Echavarria, who posted a 64, might end up closer than he thought, Young was back on the birdie train, with a tap-in on the par-5 15th and a 10-footer to close out his scoring on 17.

That puts him at 20 under, which is very much in range of the to-par tournament record, 23 under, set by Jesper Parnevik in 1999. With any score under 68 on Sunday, he’ll also break the aggregate tournament record of 258 shared by Henrik Stenson (2017) and J.T. Poston (2019).

It’s blistering stuff from Young, who showed some form with T-4 finishes at both the Canadian and U.S. Opens but was barely better than mediocre in his last two starts. So what changed? According to him, it may be a commitment to a new shot shape: the draw.

“I’m always looking through old video and stuff,” he said Saturday, “[and] just found that I used to swing it just a little bit more biased towards a draw. … My iron play this year hasn’t been great doing it the other way and I’ve noticed I kind of haven’t gotten on any substantial run anywhere, and I felt like committing to just one shot might allow me to kind of build some feel and that seems to have worked pretty well.”

He said he played almost every shot right to left on Saturday and plans to do the same on Sunday. Will the pressure of not finishing second again get to him? If you ask Young, he’s not too worried.

“If you had asked me two years ago, I’d probably say yes,” he said. “But if you go back through, I finished second a bunch, I’ve gotten beat a lot … I’ve played some good golf on Sunday in really all those cases.”

Young is right. Most prominently, at the Open Championship in 2022 at St. Andrews, he shot 65 and leap-frogged Rory McIlroy to take second. Unfortunately for him, Cam Smith shot a 64 to win by one. Other second-place finishes have followed suit. At the Rocket Mortgage that year, he shot a competent 68 but was five shots behind Tony Finau. At the Wells Fargo, again in ’22, he shot a 66 but couldn’t catch Max Homa. And in his first try, in 2021 at the Sanderson Farms, Young again shot a 68 to lose by a shot to Sam Burns.

He’s made some mistakes—a wayward drive late cost him a shot at the ’24 Valspar, and after a dramatic victory over Rory McIlroy in the semifinals of the ’23 WGC-Match Play, he didn’t have much left for Burns, losing 6 and 5. Still, none of this tells the story of someone choking leads away, and now he’ll have a chance to show what he can do as a frontrunner.

Winning a tour event, while plenty of motivation, isn’t the only thing on Young’s mind. He’s also dreaming of the Ryder Cup, to be played in his home state at Bethpage Black.

“I think that that location is, first of all, one of my favorite golf courses in the world,” he said. “I have a lot of good memories there playing the New York State Open, and I’m sure a New York crowd would be … on my side to some extent. … It hurt pretty bad to miss [the Ryder Cup] a couple years ago. I was ninth on the points list and didn’t get picked, so I was a bit frustrated with that. Set out the year to give our captain no choice, and I don’t know if I’m in a position to do that or not, but it would take some really good golf between now and then.”

Young is very much a dark horse for the team as things stand, but he can take a major step in a positive direction with a win in Greensboro. He’s put together a very good career so far, but Sunday could be the bridge that carries him from good to great.

This article was originally published on golfdigest.com