Can Cameron Young Take the Next Step?

After closing strong to win The Players, he has a major opportunity at Augusta

Tour-level golf was a focus of the coverage in the many years I spent at Golf World, but a wonderful thing about working there was the chance to go farther afield. One such occasion came in the summer of 2007 when I traveled home to Pinehurst to write a feature story about the U.S. Kids Golf World Championship.

Those junior golfers were spread out on courses all over the Sandhills, and a minority of their parents needed to take a chill pill, especially the one I saw hovering over his young daughter commanding her to stroke one post-round three-footer after another on the Mid Pines practice green.

I encountered one father caddying for his son at Pinehurst No. 1, though, who seemed to be taking a healthier approach, who knew that peaking in middle school wasn’t the point. It was David Young, whose son, Cameron, was competing in the Boys 10 age group. Years later, it was no surprise to see Cameron tell my friend Paul Rogers, in a story for The Met Golfer, that he had been encouraged to play golf, but never forced to do so, when growing up as the only child of David, a PGA professional at Sleepy Hollow Golf Club, his wife, Barbara.

Finding the results of that 2007 tournament online, I had to scroll a while to find how 10-year-old Cameron fared. He shot 82-74-79—235, tied for 40^th place, 24 strokes behind the winner, Donny Hopoi of Hawaii. Hopoi went on to play collegiately at Boise State and, according to his LinkedIn profile, is an investment adviser now.

There were some names in the Boys 10 age group who, like Young, made their way to professional golf. Zecheng Dou of China finished second and William Zalatoris was fourth. James Davis Riley tied for fifth. Sam Horsfield, Steven Fisk and the future long-drive specialist Kyle Berkshire, also walked the Pinehurst fairways that week.

Nineteen years later, on a sunny Sunday in Augusta, Ga., that should be feeling more like summer than spring by mid-afternoon, Cameron Young woke up in considerably better position after 54 holes.

Young’s 65 matched Scottie Scheffler for low third round in the 90^th Masters and vaulted him from eight strokes behind into a tie for the lead with Rory McIlroy, whose 73 allowed Young and a handful of other contenders to make up ground be in striking distance for a green jacket. Young is trying to do what Tiger Woods did in 1997: shoot 40 on the front nine Thursday and go on to win. Young has played his last 43 holes in 15 under—that’s the stuff boys dream about.

It is a fascinating final pairing for the two, who were grouped the first two days with teen amateur Mason Howell. McIlroy could have made things easier for himself, but his mediocre third round made Young’s excellent score more than window dressing. Now, to win in consecutive years, McIlroy will be forced to fight for every emerald thread. His record six-stroke lead after 36 holes seems like ancient history. Another major title would be six for McIlroy, moving him into even more elite golf territory than where he currently resides. For Young, a victory at age 28 would accelerate his career, which he enhanced last month with an impressive win at The Players.

After starring at Wake Forest, Young was a PGA Tour rookie by the time he was 24 and factored in two 2022 majors, the PGA and The Open. At Southern Hills, hurt by a double bogey on the 70^th hole, he finished a stroke out of the Justin Thomas-Zalatoris playoff won by Thomas. In the 150^th Open at St. Andrews, he was out on Sunday in the penultimate pairing with eventual champion Cameron Smith. Smith shot 64. Young eagled the 72^nd hole for 65 and finished runner-up one shot behind. Their better-ball was 60. McIlroy couldn’t buy a putt and shot 70, finishing third.

Young had seven runner-up finishes on the PGA Tour before winning the Wyndham Championship in his 94^th start last August. He closed out The Players with authority, including a pivotal birdie-2 on the 17^th hole, boosting his profile and his confidence.

“I think I said it in my press conference after [The Players] that really what I was trying to do was get ready to be playing late on Sunday at Augusta,” Young said Saturday evening. “Now, I’m here with what will be a late tee time on Sunday at Augusta, and that’s the best prep I could have asked for. I’ll try to run much the same process, same mindset as I did that day. I did a great job of just staying where I was, knowing that everybody’s going to do some different things throughout the day. You just have to stay kind of in your lane and play the best golf you can and see where you are with a couple holes to go.”

There is no island green at Augusta National, but Sunday presents a moat of pressure to catch those who don’t have the right stuff at the right time, as Shane Lowry said Saturday, “when we see what everyone is made of.”

Besides the seasoning earned through both his close calls and recent victories, Young might have a little something else on his side today.

As NBC Sports researcher Kevin Casey noted in a social-media post last night, Arnold Palmer, who put Wake Forest golf on the map, was 28 in 1958 when he won his first Masters. Young happens to be 28, and it never hurts to have history on your side.

Sublime Rory Story Through 36 Holes

McIlroy went on a roll to take command of the 90th Masters

When it comes to playing mesmerizing golf over the last quarter century or so, Tiger Woods is the leader in the clubhouse. The body of work that includes the spectacular or the dramatic, moments that lodge in memory as well as the record book, is substantial. Thunderous drives, lasered approaches, dazzling recoveries, pressure putts—Woods hit them all. In combination with the slightly older Phil Mickelson, no slouch at pulling off stunners himself, Tiger provided his era a long reel of magic. The blunt truths of his current situation are a stark contrast to the golf that wowed. Even if he is afforded another encore, it figures to be modest, absent of the amazing.

Woods isn’t at the 90^th Masters, but thanks to Rory McIlroy the tournament has bubbled with the delight delivered by one of the best doing what he can do.

Six players had led at Augusta National by five strokes at the halfway point, from Harry Cooper in 1936 to Scottie Scheffler in 2022, but McIlroy bumped them aside with a sublime conclusion to his second round that put him in prime position to win back-to-back green jackets. It isn’t just that McIlroy finished 36 holes with a record six-stroke lead; the way he seized control in the golden late-afternoon light, last act of a beautiful day, was cinematic.

What McIlroy did Friday on the back nine, beginning on the par-3 12^th hole, recalled the brilliance of Woods and other greats at their peak powers. McIlroy’s golf was creative, explosive. He made a half dozen birdies coming home to put himself in another zip code going into the weekend.

Having fulfilled two dreams in Augusta last spring—winning the Masters and completing the career Grand Slam—McIlroy is a man in full. A lot can happen over 36 holes, and McIlroy knows more than most about how things can quickly go south in northeast Georgia. Yet when McIlroy slipped on that famous coat, he shed a golf burden that had weighed down the fellow with the springiest stride in the sport when things are going well.

McIlroy was tied with Patrick Reed as he hit his tee shot on No. 12 to seven feet. He sank the birdie and the run began, two hours of getting it done, shots sprayed and stiffed. As Justin Rose—playoff loser to McIlroy in 2025 and to Sergio Garcia in 2017, who admirably is in mix again at age 45—noted after the second round, it’s more likely to try too hard than not hard enough at the Masters or one of the other majors.

There is a sweet spot of caring, perhaps harder to find than the center of a driver of yesteryear, when freedom reigns over tension or tentativeness. McIlroy found it Friday, and the results were glorious. Seven-footer at the 13^th, 10-footer at the 15^th, three-footer at the 16^th and six-footer at the 18^th.

McIlroy might well execute more memorable shots over the final 36 holes, but for now what he did on the 17^th hole Friday is the signature shot of this Masters. From just inside 30 yards, he hit a pitch-and-run that was as good as it gets—textbook form, roar-producing result. Because McIlroy was slightly below the green, he couldn’t see the ball gently tap the flagstick and settle in for a 3 but the sight of spectators standing in anticipation told the outcome before the noise confirmed it. As the replays rolled, showing the shot and the reactions from various angles, it was easy to think of the footage of McIlroy as a golf-loving kid, chipping a ball into the washing machine at home in Holywood, Northern Ireland. He is 36 now, and he was a golfer getting joy out the game late Friday afternoon.

It would be a big deal if McIlroy can take care of business on Saturday and Sunday. A victory would link him to Nicklaus, Nick Faldo and Woods, the only players to have won consecutive Masters titles. More significantly, it would make him only the 15^th man with six or more professional majors, a group that Mickelson, with his impressive 2021 PGA Championship win just shy of his 51^st birthday, was the most recent to join.

McIlroy, it appears, is poised not only to win, but do so in style, his style, but with echoes of those who came before, company you want to keep.

'Double, Double Toil and Trouble'

Shane Lowry's difficult finish costs him at the Cognizant

I don’t know if Rory McIlroy texted Shane Lowry Sunday evening, but a brief message to his good friend following the conclusion of the Cognizant Classic in the Palm Beaches could have said a lot:

2024 U.S. Open 2025 Masters

Simply mentioning those two tournaments would have been effective shorthand for how a world-class golfer can be gutted one year and redeem himself fully the next. McIlroy let that U.S. Open slip away, painfully so, at Pinehurst No. 2. In that Masters 10 months later, he outlasted his nerves, and Justin Rose in a playoff, to slip into a green jacket and into golf history as the sixth man to complete the modern career Grand Slam.

Sporting pain. Sporting pleasure. To be sure, Lowry understands the latter. Just last fall, in the Ryder Cup, he made a monumental birdie putt on the 18^th hole of Bethpage Black to halve his match with Russell Henley, the half-point ensuring Europe the necessary 14 points to retain the Cup.

Lowry was a man coming through in the biggest of moments for his team and for his continent. It was a stroke that made him a forever hero in an event in which Europe has enjoyed so much success for four decades. The way he delivered under pressure was reminiscent of how Lowry, playing for himself on his home island, came through in the 2019 Open Championship at Royal Portrush, where he persevered in the rain and wind of a summer Sunday in Northern Ireland to walk away with the claret jug by six strokes.

That afternoon while working in Portrush I called Esker Hills Golf Club in County Offaly, where Lowry developed his game. It was hard to hear the manager who eventually got on the phone, so loud were the locals jammed into the club watching their man on television. “Full jam,” he told me, as if I couldn’t tell.

Lowry had begun the round four strokes clear of the field after a sterling 63 on Saturday and was as steady as the trophy engraver throughout the challenging final day. Closing wasn’t a problem for Lowry that Sunday, when he parred the 16^th hole, “Calamity Corner,” and the 17^th hole, “Purgatory,” on his way to an emotional victory.

What Lowry wouldn’t have given for pars and Nos. 16 and 17 at PGA National’s Champion course late Sunday afternoon, when golf became very, very hard for him at exactly the wrong time.

Lowry got through No. 15, the first stop of the three-hole, water-laden “Bear Trap” with a golden par. He walked to the tee of the par-4 16^th with a three-stroke lead. He was having a wonderful day—an eagle on the 10^th and four birdies. He hadn’t made a bogey on the weekend, which he began with an eight-under 63.

Then, everything went south for the Irishman who has made south Florida home for several years.

Lowry badly blocked a 3-iron into the water off the 16^th tee and had to work hard (getting up and down from a greenside bunker) to salvage a double bogey.

“I played unbelievable all day, and one bad shot on 16 completely threw me off for the last three holes,” Lowry said afterward. “I said [to caddie] Darren, ‘How do I feel like this now when I went through what I did last September at Bethpage and go through that fine.’ I felt like it was weird out there. Just couldn’t feel the clubface the last three holes after my tee shot on 16.”

It was evident on the 17^th how out of sorts Lowry was when, after he watched Nico Echavarria in the pairing ahead birdie the challenging par 3 to tie him at 17 under, Lowry again found the water far right of his target.

Another terrible shot. Another double bogey.

“I had an unbelievable up-and-down to make 6 and stay ahead, but then I go and watch Nico hole that putt to tie for the lead,” Lowry said. “It was a perfect number for me, and it suited me perfectly. Wind was slightly out of the left, and that’s my bread and butter, a little chip 7-iron. But golf does strange things to you at times, and it certainly did it to me today.”

It was the Cognizant Classic in the Palm Beaches, not the U.S. Open, but Colin Montgomerie had flared a 7-iron on the 72^nd hole at Winged Foot in 2006 to blow one of his best chances at an elusive major title.

Lowry is now 1-for-6 in converting a 54-hole leads/co-leads on the PGA Tour, his Open title the lone success. Earlier this season, in the Dubai Invitational on the DP World Tour, Lowry was tied for the lead coming to the 72^nd hole but hit his approach into a bunker and made a double bogey. “

“What can I say? It’s very disappointing,” Lowry said. “Geez, this is going to be hard to take. Dubai was hard at the start of year, but this is going to be pretty hard.”

Lowry had wanted this Sunday to end with a trophy for a reason other than breaking his drought in individual events which dates to the 2022 BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth, where he edged Rory McIlroy and Jon Rahm by one stroke. His younger daughter, Ivy, was his motivation.

“The hardest thing about today is that I’ve never won in front of my 4-year-old,” Lowry said, “and she was there waiting for me. I only wanted it for her today. I don’t care about anything else. I wanted it so bad. Just to see her little ginger hair running down the 18^th green would have been the most special thing in the world. I thought I had it. I thought I was going to win.”

Golfers lose more than they win, and some of the greatest have said they learned more in defeat than in victory. Perhaps there will be a lesson for Lowry in the strokes he threw away, and that he will bounce back strong—perhaps this coming week in the Arnold Palmer Invitational, at The Players, or somewhere else sooner rather than later. Certainly, there is something for Lowry’s peers (and any sportsperson) to take from how he handled the jarring turn of events, with class and candor, as another golfer accepted the spoils that appeared to be his.

Memoir Website Is Live

Info about A Quick Nine Before Dark

It’s just about six weeks until publication day (April 1) for my memoir A Quick Nine Before Dark: A Life in Golf.

Wanted subscribers of The Albatross to be the first to see the website for the book, where you can enjoy a handful of brief excerpts, find out a bit about it, and see what folks who have had an early look have to say. There are also links to several sites where the book can be pre-ordered.

Here's the link to my memoir's website.

Hope you all can take a look.

Bill

Four Is Enough

The Players: special but not a major

There has been much chatter about The Players Championship recently following a tagline in a PGA Tour commercial (“March is going to be major”) and Brandel Chamblee’s enthusiastic endorsement of the event on Golf Channel.

“In every single way that a metric could be used to measure whether something is a major, The Players, to me, stands alone and above the other four major championships as not just a major,” Chamblee said. “It is, in my estimation, the best major.”

Even coming from a commentator who thrives on data but sometimes enjoys stirring the pot with the biggest spoon in the kitchen, that level of full-throated advocacy is hard to fathom.

I disagree with Chamblee. I agree with the sentiment of Rory McIlory, who talked about the issue yesterday when he met with the media at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

“I think The Players is one of the best golf tournaments in the world,” McIlroy said. “I don’t think anyone disputes that or argues that. I think from a player perspective it’s amazing. I think from an on-site fan experience it’s amazing. It’s an amazing golf course, location, venue. But … I’m a traditionalist, I’m a historian of the game. We have four major championships. You know, if you want to see what five major championships looks like, look at the women’s game. I don’t know how well that’s went for them. It’s The Players. It doesn’t need to be anything else.”

McIlroy continued: “I would say it’s got more of an identity than the PGA Championship does at the minute. So, from an identity standpoint, I think The Players has got it nailed. It is an amazing tournament in its own right, and I don’t think it being classified a major or not a major makes it any more or any less. I’m very proud to have won that tournament twice as I’m sure all the other champions are. It stands on its own without the label.”

One of McIlroy’s victories on The Stadium course in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., came just last year, not long before he won his first Masters to complete the career Grand Slam. McIlroy’s Players’ win, in a playoff over J.J. Spaun, who soon was to prove his mettle by winning the U.S. Open, was a fine achievement. But McIlroy’s Masters victory was on an entirely different level, an accomplishment that lifted him into the sport’s stratosphere. Its meaning was measured not by the strength of the field McIlroy beat at Augusta National but by the victor dropping to his knees, overcome by emotion, when it was over.

Chamblee has pointed out, correctly, in social media posts since his initial comments on The Players’ status, that golf’s majors have evolved over time. Much of the evolution related to elite golf’s transition from being largely about amateurs to being focused on professionals. The Masters emerged as the fourth leg of the professional major matrix—instead of, say, the Western Open or the North and South Open—thanks in large measure to Bobby Jones, Arnold Palmer and sportswriters who embraced the spring invitational from the bottom of their hearts and the home keys of their Royals.

Jones’ involvement with Augusta National might have been too much to overcome. Had the Tufts family which ran Pinehurst been more enamored with the growing pro circuit, supported the pros more vigorously, and courted the press as Augusta National did, it’s possible the North and South Open could have given the Masters a run for mid-20^th century prestige. We’ll never know. The North and South Open was played for the last time in 1951, nearly a decade before Palmer won the Masters and U.S. Open and traveled to the 1960 Open at St. Andrews with a “modern Grand Slam” in mind. Palmer (and his writer pal Bob Drum) formalized an idea that had been loosely thrown around earlier, going back to Craig Wood in 1941 (who won the Masters and U.S. Open) and Sam Snead in 1949 (who won the Masters and PGA, played that year in May).

The current roster of majors that has underpinned the game for many decades would be best served by the PGA Championship being played outside of the United States every couple of years, a move that would enhance its status while acknowledging the truly global nature of golf. Four would remain four. Men’s professional golf doesn’t need five majors. Tradition, in this situation, is a strength.

The Players is a wonderful event, although it’s shame that TPC Sawgrass doesn’t more closely resemble what Pete and Alice Dye originally created, a course that was rougher around the edges. The tournament is the flagship event for the PGA Tour, and, as with the Masters, the built-up familiarity for the venue after many years is a true attribute.

It’s fair, though, to wonder whether the tour hasn’t hurt its own cause when it comes to how The Players is regarded. Before the advent of the PGA Tour Playoffs two decades ago and the more recent elevation of select events to “signature” status, The Players had more of a chance to stand out. Now, it is a big deal among other big deals touted by the tour. The Players remains the real deal, but it’s not a major.