Cameron Young returns in style at World Wide Technology Championship

Cameron Young notched five runner-up finishes in his Rookie of the Year campaign last year. He did not win.

He lost to Sam Burns in the final of the World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play this year, and as he’s often reminded, he still has not won on the PGA TOUR. (At the ripe, old age of 26.)

How’s his patience level?

“I think for a while I was all out, I didn't have much patience left,” Young said at the World Wide Technology Championship in Los Cabos, Mexico, where he shot a bogey-free 65 in relatively calm conditions Thursday morning and was one back after the morning wave. “I think I've kind of come to terms with the fact that I've played plenty of golf that's worthy of winning a golf tournament out here.

“Obviously it hasn't worked out that way yet,” he continued, “but I think I've played plenty of good golf and I fully believe that that golf can win a tournament out here. So I've let go of it a little bit and I'm much more focused on trying to get better as much as I can.”

To that end, Young, the highest-ranked player (17th) in the field at El Cardonal, began a long break after finishing T15 at the BMW Championship on Aug. 20. Although he’d done enough to get into the Signature Events for 2024, it had been a somewhat frustrating season in which he’d struggled on the greens (falling to 149th in Strokes Gained: Putting), and narrowly missed out on making the U.S. Ryder Cup Team.

It was time to regroup, maybe try some new equipment (he’s playing new custom Titleist irons).

This week Young is also using a fill-in caddie, David Cooke (Adam Schenk’s usual bag man) instead of Paul Tesori (who recommended Cooke). It all paid off in Young’s ball-striking clinic Thursday, a fairways-and-greens fest that could easily have yielded a score closer to 10 under, had some putts fallen.

Not that he was complaining.

“I've really been at home with my family,” Young said. “I've practiced not hours and hours on end, but just consistently every day. I haven't had kind of the time to do that in a few years really, so it was a nice time for me to kind of work on some mechanical stuff. Nice to see it – nice to see it work today kind of how I intended.”

He was also still relishing having had the opportunity to play with a global pop icon in the Wednesday pro-am.

“I actually had no idea I was playing with him,” Young said. “I saw his name on the scorecard, and I thought that must be kind of someone else named Justin Timberlake, but it was not. He's a blast to play with. He's a good golfer, I think he said he's been down near scratch at times, and you can definitely see where that comes from. He hits it pretty hard. Yeah, he was really, really a pleasure to play with and we had a good time.”

You could say the pairing was a victory in and of itself.