– Cameron Young (-13) carded an excellent 68 in the final round of THE PLAYERS and won the tournament by one stroke over his playing partner, Matthew Fitzpatrick (-12), while the leader at the start of the day, Ludvig Aberg (-9), imploded — a round of even par would have been enough to keep his chances alive, but he posted a poor 76 on Sunday. A victory that, unbelievable as it may still seem, is only this player’s second on the PGA Tour. You would think from his celebration on the 18th green of the Stadium course, so discreet and so restrained, that his win tally exceeded a dozen, but the New Yorker is like that. Very inward. He is not someone who outwardly displays his emotions much, and that’s fine. There needs to be a bit of everything, and Young seems to come from an older breed of players rather than from his generation, which is more given to showmanship and audiovisual virality
– Young, by any measure, is today, in Ponte Vedra Beach, where he has finished confirming his place in the world, which is none other than the one predicted for him some years ago, when he burst into the forefront of world golf. He had everything to be a top-level star and was considered, for example, a potential winner of major championships, even knowing how risky such predictions always are. In any case he was regarded as a player destined for a long and successful career on the PGA Tour, but very soon he showed a vulnerable, turbulent side, one that had nothing to do with technique: he found excessive difficulty in closing out tournaments, in taking a step forward when the margin for manoeuvre was tiny. Today, that player who insisted on making glaring mistakes at the moments titles were decided was something completely different. Today Young unleashed a massive drive on the 15th and found the fairway; he hit another great tee shot on the 16th (although he did miss the second shot, it’s true), the course’s final par 5; he risked it on the vertiginous 17th, the most famous par 3 in the world, where he made a birdie that proved decisive; and again he hit a colossal tee shot on the 18th, from one of the most intimidating tees in golf. In short: the moment Aberg opened the door he went all out, desperately searching for birdies at every hole, took more risks and acted with enormous determination, save for that mentioned error from the 16th fairway. He did exactly what the most exuberant Tiger Woods would have done, the one from those early years, the year 2000 to be exact, because he also had alongside him, in the same pairing, a player who wasn’t going to flinch, Fitzpatrick, so the head-to-head between them turned into an epic, truly beautiful duel
– Let’s say that this hugely prestigious victory marks the emphatic end of a long maturation process for an extraordinary player, who will now have to be regarded as a leading favourite in all the big events. A process whose long final stretch began with his first win on the PGA Tour last August (Wyndham), gained substance with a stellar performance in the Ryder Cup at Bethpage, where he was the best of the US team, and has been completed with this victory, which, moreover, in a very significant and perhaps definitively prophetic way, places Young inside the top ten and the top 5 worldwide for the first time in his career. Many analysts and fans had projected that world top ten long ago, and they were not wrong, although it has taken him a little longer than expected to get there. Come on, there’s no need to get so carried away: after all he’s only 28 and this is his fifth consecutive season on the PGA Tour, so the wait has been long but not tedious, especially if we consider that his first four years at the highest level were peppered with runner-up finishes (as many as seven), which at least kept reminding us how good he was and could become
– Ludvid Aberg was the big loser on Sunday at TPC Sawgrass. The efforts of Young, Fitzpatrick and Schauffele (-11) were important, but it must also be acknowledged that it was the Swede who cleared the way for the other contenders in a dramatic stretch of play that began with a dreadful second shot at the 11th, a par 5 (it went into the water on the right; in fact his ball took a dip in the very middle of the lake), and continued with another poor tee shot on the 12th that again sent the ball into the water, without any hope or suspense. Although it’s also worth noting that he had not looked sharp or dominant before holes 11 and 12, nor did he show any capacity to react afterwards
– The Swede may still need to find, more naturally, a sixth gear that sharpens his competitiveness when he crosses the now-or-never line. Young found it at Bethpage. And also in this finish at Ponte Vedra Beach. Young and Aberg will meet many Sundays, up there, at the big events. We can be certain of that. Perhaps even at the first Major of 2026, the Masters, which already awaits around the corner
