Cam Young proved his quality at TPC Sawgrass last week as he held his nerve to win The Players Championship by one stroke from Matt Fitzpatrick.
Young birdied the 17th hole at Sawgrass during his final round, then made a par on the tricky 18th hole after bombing a drive 375 yards down the middle of the fairway.
The 28-year-old from Scarborough, New York, is clearly an exceptional talent but there were always question marks over whether he had what it takes to win the very biggest tournaments.
However, that talk has now well and truly been put to bed after Young triumphed at The Players Championship.
Young oozed class down the stretch at The Players last week, and his superb drive on the 18th hole typified his strong mentality.
He actually didn’t win on the PGA Tour until his 94th start at the Wyndham Championship in August last year.
However, his victory at TPC Sawgrass was the week where he really came of age.
As Young tapped in from short distance to win The Players on Sunday, the realisation must have dawned on him that he is actually one of the very best golfers in the world now.
Kevin Kisner shares his ‘inside info’ on Cam Young
The two-time PGA Tour winner has always been a superb player.
His ball-striking is pretty much unrivalled in the professional game, but he really struggled to get over the line for a long time.
However, once he got the monkey off his back at the Wyndham Championship last year, he was like a completely different player.
Young’s fine form towards the end of the 2025 season earned him a spot on the United States Ryder Cup team.
The 28-year-old was a standout performer for Keegan Bradley’s team at Bethpage Black in September, and he will undoubtedly be a key player for the US Ryder Cup side over the next decade and more.
So what has been the key to Young’s turnaround in form over the past six or seven months? Kevin Kisner spoke about Young’s development as a player during an appearance on the Fore Play Podcast Plus.
He responded when asked how the 2026 Players Champion has managed to make such drastic improvements with his putting.
“Well, fortunately, I get a little inside info from team events and hanging out with these guys,” Kisner said.
“But I asked him at the Ryder Cup, we were walking down in a practice round.
“I was like, ‘Dude, when did you start putting so much better’? And he’s like, ‘Well, first of all, I was moving my head’, which everyone talks about keeping your head still, but literally one of the best players in the world is still working on keeping his head still.
“He means throughout the stroke, like, a lot of guys’ heads will go forward when the putter goes back, and then back when the putter goes through, right?
“Just because you’re trying to balance off the movement of the putter.
“But he said he really worked hard on not moving his head, and then he hired one of his college teammates.
“So he says, Kyle Sterbinsky is his caddie, and he said, ‘He’s the best green reader I’ve ever seen in my life, and I just started saying, just tell me where to line my ball up’.
“And he started making putts, and he’s like, ‘Dude, this is incredible. Now we’re, like, this huge, formidable team on reading greens that I was just kind of out here doing it all on my own, moving my head all over the place, and just getting frustrated as hell because I could hit it with anybody and never make a putt’.
“And he was like, ‘It’s amazing Kis’.
“Once I started making putts, the game gets way easier, and it’s just cool that he has all his trust in one of his college teammates.
“He gets to come down the final stretch of The Players with a dude that he loves as a buddy, that he trusts, like, you can’t really draw better situations.
“So, uh, kudos to that team.“
The numbers behind Cam Young’s putting improvements
Young is ranked 48th on the PGA Tour in strokes gained putting this season, and has gained an average of 0.313 strokes on the field every single round on the greens.
That may not sound amazing, but when you compare those numbers to his putting stats in previous seasons, it’s clear to see how much he has improved.
Last season he ended up finishing seventh in strokes gained putting, but he started his new putting technique around this time last year, so that explains his position near the top of the rankings.
However, he struggled terribly on the greens during the three seasons before that.
He was ranked 145th in strokes gained putting in 2024, 158th in the 2022/2023 season and 68th in the 2021/22 season.
In 2024, he lost around 0.23 strokes per round to the field on the greens, while he lost roughly 0.29 shots to the field in the 2022/23 season.
Last season, he gained around 0.64 shots per round on the greens, which means he’s averaging around 0.9 strokes less every single round on the greens – roughly 3.5-4 shots in every tournament.
This season, his numbers have dropped slightly from last year, but he’s still gaining more than 0.3 strokes on the field when putting in every round he plays.
If he continues to putt well, there may well be no stopping Young. He is one of the best ball-strikers on the planet, and now he has the belief that he can win the biggest tournaments.
Every other player on the PGA Tour had better watch out.
