By Jeff Mills, Special to the Wyndham Championship
GREENSBORO — By the time Cameron Young stepped onto the first tee box Sunday afternoon, there was only one question left to answer.
Could a seven-time PGA TOUR runner-up hold onto the lead and win for the first time?
By the time Young got to the seventh hole, the question had changed.
How big would his margin of victory be?
Young closed with a final-round 68 to finish 22-under par, winning the 86th Wyndham Championship by six strokes over runner-up Mac Meissner and matching the tournament scoring record held by Henrik Stenson (2017) and J.T. Poston (2019).
“It feels like a long time coming,” Young said. “For the first year-and-a-half I was out here on TOUR, it felt like I had a chance to win every third week. Those weeks have 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.”
Young becomes the 1,000th tournament winner in PGA TOUR history. He’s the 23rd player to score his first victory at the Wyndham Championship, the seventh-oldest event on TOUR. He is the fourth Wake Forest alumnus to win here following Lanny Wadkins (1983), Scott Hoch (2001) and Webb Simpson (2011), who joined Young as first-time PGA TOUR winners at Sedgefield.
Young’s victory lap around the Donald Ross golf course at stately Sedgefield Country Club started with a three-putt bogey, cutting his five-shot cushion to four.
No matter. For the second time this week, Young reeled off an absurd string of five-consecutive birdies to get to 24-under par. He held a nine-shot lead with 12 holes to play, and the only drama left was the final margin of victory.
“I played the front nine really, really well this week,” Young said. “I was (15) under on the front. I just knew there were opportunities. Obviously, No. 1 was a little messy, but then I got to work. Nice to see all those putts go in.”
Young, a 28-year-old Wake Forest alumnus who turned pro in 2019, won in his 94th start on TOUR. And when the final putt dropped in, he was a little lost.
He embraced his caddy, shook hands with playing partner Nico Echavarría, then turned to tournament Executive Director Mark Brazil and asked, “What do I do now?”
“Every time I’ve come off the last green my entire career, I have shaken the hands of whoever I’ve played with, thanked the standard bearer and our walking scorer, and then walked through the tunnel to scoring,” Young said. “Today there were about 150 people between me and that tunnel. So at that point I got confused. I didn’t know if I did that first, or if I spoke to somebody first. That’s the first time I’ve done anything any different after holing out on 18. I would prefer that outcome more often.”
In between the string of birdies and that last putt, Young understood the big lead he’d built and managed the golf course. He hunted for the middle of fairways and the center of greens, making 10 pars and a pair of three-putt bogeys in his final 12 holes.
“I was a little bit nervous starting out today, and then by the time I made the second or third birdie, I was just ready to get it done,” Young said. “I wasn’t nervous at all those last bunch. At that point, I had my foot off the gas, and frankly, I knew I could make a couple bogeys. It was just a matter of not hitting it anywhere where I could possibly make a double.
“I didn’t want to play that way. I wanted to win by 12. But at some point, there’s something more important than that. Probably with four holes to go and an eight-shot lead, I was just trying to get it done. Even though I had a couple putts for par, it was the least stressful few holes of my career.”
With the breakthrough victory, Young moves from 40th to 16th in the FedEx Cup standings, putting himself in excellent position to advance all the way to the season-ending TOUR Championship, strengthening his case to make the U.S. Ryder Cup team.
“Four birdies in a row,” Young said. “No. 3 felt like a putt I should have made. No. 4, I was just trying to two-putt and it fell in the front lip. On No. 5, you feel like you should make birdie, and then No. 6 is a bonus on top of those three. I just played some really nice golf there for about an hour.”
“Man, I’m so happy for him,” said Webb Simpson, a fellow Wake Forest alumnus. “He’s one of those players who is unique in the sense everyone knows how good he is. There’s plenty of guys who we think are good enough to win, but you’re still not sure until you do it. He was a little different. … I think he has a very high ceiling. He’s long off the tee. Now he’s 10th in putting this year. He’ll be a guy we’re talking about for 10 or 15 years.”
NEWS AND NOTES:
After Young’s hot start, everyone else was playing for second. And they knew it.
“I played with Cam yesterday,” runner-up Meissner said. “I didn’t really feel I had much of a chance going into today, to be honest.”
Meissner closed with a 66 to finish alone in second at 16-under. He started the week 152nd in FedEx Cup points and moved up to 86th. Only the top-70 players to advance into the playoffs, which begin next week in Memphis, Tenn.
Chris Kirk, who closed with a 68 and finished tied for fifth, was the only player to move into the top 70. He started the week 73rd in the point standings and moved up to 61st.
“I was significantly more nervous today than I would have been in that same situation, playing in the next-to-last group,” Kirk said. “I knew I was in great position to have a good week and move on to next week, but there’s the pressure of that and also trying to not try to think too far forward.”
Davis Thomspon (71st), Gary Woodland (72nd) and Mark Hubbard (77th) all played well this week and moved up in the FedEx Cup standings. But not high enough.
Cam Davis (69th) and Matti Schmid (70th) held onto their playoff spots, while Patrick Rodgers moved from 68th to 63rd.
“The downtime is the worst,” Rodgers said. “When you’re in your hotel room by yourself having time to think about it, checking the leaderboard — your mind tends to go to all the places you don’t want it to. Once I was here and swinging the golf clubs, I felt a little bit better. This is a job and a game with so much uncertainty. So much is out of your control, and it was difficult to manage all summer long — especially this week.”
The pressure of the FedEx Cup wasn’t a factor for 20-year-old Jackson Koivun.
Koivun, the top-ranked amateur in the world, shot 67 in his final round and finished tied for fifth.
Koivun is a college star at Auburn University. He played on a sponsor’s exemption, choosing it over the Western Amateur tournament.
It was his sixth PGA TOUR start; he earned his TOUR card through the PGA TOUR University program, but will return to Auburn for his junior year this fall and accept TOUR membership next year.
“It’s a little stressful coming down the stretch,” Koivun said. “I’m happy with the way I played. … I definitely feel a little more comfortable out here. Definitely still have those first-tee nerves. I don’t think those are ever going to go away. This is a great venue, and I’m just happy to be out here.”
Maybe so. But there’s no way anyone is happier than Cameron Young right now.
