[PHOTO: Jared C. Tilton]
If you were pressed to pinpoint the most dramatic moment of the final round of the Wyndham Championship, you would undoubtedly go right to the playoff bubble drama. But if you had to narrow your focus to the action involving tournament champion Cameron Young, you’d have to go all the way back to the first hole.
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When Young pulled his drive into the left rough, came up short on his approach, hit an awful third, and missed his 21-foot par putt, perhaps you could briefly sense the ghosts of his seven previous runner-up finishes. Perhaps you could start to envision a nightmare playing out at Sedgefield Country Club. Perhaps you could talk yourself into something other than the runaway that his five-shot 54-hole lead promised.
And then he made five straight birdies. And then it was over.
Young’s scintillating front-nine stretch, which included putts of eight feet, 26 feet, eight feet, seven feet and 13 feet, seemed at that moment like a re-telling of the tortoise and the hare fable, where the determined hare just keeps running and leaves exactly 74 other turtles in his dust. Young, 28, is somewhat famous in golf for his resume of second-place finishes – seven, in all – but this was his first 54-hole lead, and he capitalised on it with a series of exclamation marks. Sometimes, when you’re meant to win, you’re really meant to win.
Those were the last birdies Young would make on the day, and they were the last he needed, eventually finishing at 22-under-par, eight shots clear of Mac Meissner in second. The only topic of mild interest in the home stretch were a pair of tournament records – Jesper Parnevik’s 23-under-par in 1999, the best score to par, and the aggregate record of 258 achieved by both Henrik Stenson (2017) and J.T. Poston (2019). Two late bogeys cost Young the Parnevik record and left him with the exact same aggregate as Stenson and Poston, who he’ll join in the record books.
"I've been waiting for it for a while. I never thought I'd really be that emotional about it."
Cameron Young joins Amanda Balionis after the win pic.twitter.com/8gzA9H2qPq
— Golf on CBS ⛳ (@GolfonCBS) August 3, 2025
The extent to which any of that mattered to him could best be intuited by the fact that he called the back nine “the least stressful few holes of my career”. All he cared about, understandably, was bagging that elusive win.
“It feels like a long time coming,” he said. “I felt like for the first year-and-a-half that I was out here I had a chance to win every third week it felt like. They’ve been a bit more few and far between, so to have a chance like this today, I was not going to let it get away from me and I’m thankful that I didn’t.”
Young had a pair of very good results earlier in the summer with back-to-back T-4 finishes at the Canadian and US Opens, but it would have been impossible to see this kind of dominance coming, particularly after a missed cut in his last start.
So how do you explain it?
One answer might be Young’s commitment to return to hitting a draw, which had been his usual method of attack earlier in his career. The concept occurred to him around 10 days ago, and he decided to put it in play this week, even when a shot seemed to call for a different shape. Pin tucked on the right of the green? He was still hitting a draw. Clearly, it worked.
“I was really just kind of curious how that would affect playing out there,” he said. “You know, there’s times that it wasn’t my first choice of shot, but I kind of just committed to doing it all week. I’m sure there’s a couple you could go back to some right pins where conventional wisdom says don’t start it right of the right fringe, but I told myself I was going to do it and stuck to it all week.”
Photo: Johnnie Izquierdo
There’s also the putting. Young has gone from 145th in strokes gained/putting last year to 10th this year, which he attributes to a few tweaks in his setup and a lot of practice. This week, he was first among all players in putting, gaining 10.8 strokes, which he cemented with his hot streak on the front nine.
As always, this win belonged in part to his family. Young’s father, David Young, was the head pro at Sleepy Hollow Country Club in New York, and he was with Young every step of the way on Sunday. Back at the club, a very boozy party was underway, and with discount drinks offered for each birdie, Young gave them plenty of chances to accelerate the festivities. Young spoke of the role his father played – he’s like a manager and a coach all in one – but he also spoke of another New York connection that will be pertinent this September: the Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black.
“It hurt pretty bad to miss it a couple years ago,” he said on Saturday. “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. But if I’m in the question, that’s been a big goal of mine, and I’d love to put myself there anyway.”
He’s taken the first big step, and while he won’t be anywhere near automatic qualification (he’ll rise to 15th place), and may still be on the outside looking in, he’s undoubtedly put himself in position to make the team with strong finishes in the playoffs.
And speaking of playoffs, this finish will also remove one source of stress – he came into the week 40th in the standings, with his position even in the second event uncertain. Now, he’s 16th, and has an inside track to make the Tour Championship.
In many ways, it was possible to forget about Young after his hot streak came to an end in 2024 without a win to show for it, and in the shadow of Scottie Scheffler’s emergence, there’s less oxygen for someone who isn’t winning at his outrageous clip. But this win changes everything, and makes him impossible to forget – on tour, in the playoffs to come, and, he hopes, for captain Keegan Bradley. In all these ways, he seems to be gaining ground a bit later than expected, but there’s no doubt that he’s gaining fast.
