PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FLORIDA | If the walk from the 16th green to the 17th tee is the one everyone sees at the Stadium Course during the Players Championship, there is one more walk to make.
Leaving the 17th green, players walk across a little path, through a tunnel beneath the bleachers and come out at the 18th tee, where they see a water-guarded fairway that can seem like the final steps up Everest.
Almost there but not quite.
That’s where Cameron Young and Matt Fitzpatrick found themselves late Sunday afternoon at TPC Sawgrass, sharing the lead with one hole remaining, shirts rippling in the breeze and strain painted like summer sweat on their faces.
They had spent most of the four tournament days in chase mode until Ludvig Åberg, who had the look of a presumed champion, left the stage early in the back nine, ultimately leaving it to Young to win the Players Championship with a par on the 72nd hole.
Fitzpatrick, the 2022 U.S. Open champion, had led by a stroke when the two of them stepped onto the 17th tee a few moments earlier.
Young, with his thick beard and dark hair curling out from beneath his cap, rarely cracks a smile. He leaves both buttons undone on his shirts and plays with a muscular intensity that exemplifies the modern game but there is nuance to his game.
He never needed it more than on the par-3 17th tee late Sunday afternoon as thunderstorms blowing up from the south freshened the problematic breeze.
With the wind coming off his left shoulder, Young – at what can feel like the loneliest place in golf – leaned over the haunting shot and played it like a dream, landing his 57-degree wedge shot just past the middle of the green so it could take the gentle slope and finish 9 feet away.
“I’m going to hit the best shot of my life right here. I don’t know if I can think of one that’s better.”
Cameron Young
On a tee that asks one profound question underpinned by a spider web of others – can you hit the shot right now – Young’s mind was clear. Perfect yardage. Perfect club. Nearly perfect result.
“It was a shot that was much easier than it could have been,” Young said later.
When Fitzpatrick missed his birdie putt, Young watched his 9-foot putt take the last bit of right-to-left break, ignore the bumps in the browning grass and fall in.
From there, they made the walk to the 18th tee and Young realized he had never been where he found himself. His only PGA Tour victory – at the 2025 Wyndham Championship – had been a runaway and his seven previous runner-up finishes had never put him on the tee of the 72nd hole tied for the lead.
Yet there he was and he had a simple thought.
“I’m going to hit the best shot of my life right here. I don’t know if I can think of one that’s better,” Young said, the gold Players Championship trophy sitting on a table beside him.
One day after his tee shot on 18 found the water, leading to a finishing double bogey, Young ripped a 375-yard, gently drawing tee shot over and around what appears from the tee to be one of the largest lakes in Florida. It was, according to the people who track such things, the longest tee shot on the hole in the ShotLink era, dating back to 2004.
“There was no point during that back nine where I felt like I needed to hit a great shot or even really a good one, I just kind of had to get the ball forward,” said Young, who finished at 13-under-par 275.
“I haven’t had really many moments like that … first time that thought’s really popped in my mind, and I think I did what I intended. It’s one of the best shots I’ve ever hit in my life.”
Matt Fitzpatrick didn’t quite go low enough to win the Players Championship.
DAVID CANNON, GETTY IMAGES
Fitzpatrick, meanwhile, found the right trees, was forced to play short of the green and, needing to hole an 8-foot putt to force a playoff, couldn’t do it.
“I felt like I hit a good drive, and once you’re out of position it’s difficult to make your par,” said Fitzpatrick, who earned his first top-three finish on the PGA Tour since 2023.
The Stadium Course has built its reputation on the provocative things it causes to happen, especially over the closing holes, and Sunday followed the script. The longer the day went, the harder the course played. The wind picked up, greens dried out and the nerves began to fray. It was like walking across a frozen pond, knowing it was melting, waiting to make that wrong step.
It happened suddenly to Åberg, who held the lead on the tee of the par-5 11th, a hole made for birdies more than bogeys. But he flared his second to the right into the water and it was as if his spell was broken.
Moments later, on the short par-4 12th, Åberg toe-hooked his tee shot into a pond, leading to a double bogey on his way to a closing 76 that ruined what could have been the biggest Sunday of his still-young career.
Until he won the Wyndham Championship last August, Young had been defined more by what he had not done – win a PGA Tour event – than by what he might become. He had mastered the near miss, seven times finishing second to someone else, adding another log to the stack of wood he was forced to drag with him until he won.
A little more than one month later, Young was the best player on the American Ryder Cup team, going 3-1 at Bethpage Black, further stamping his place in the game’s new order.
The father of three young children, the 28-year-old Young seems less like part of a peer group and more like one of a kind. He understands that he keeps his emotions buried on the golf course but the glow on his face as he hugged his children during the trophy presentation warmed the early evening.
Young abandoned the idea of setting goals because he found himself continually falling short of his own “wildly unreasonable” expectations.
“I’m never going to be real smiley,” Young said. “I think if you asked my wife, she would say he’s a very, very happy person. And I am. I mean, I love my life, I love my family, I love my job. I couldn’t ask for much more. I’m healthy. I have healthy little children.”
Now, he has one of the biggest trophies in the game. Young abandoned the idea of setting goals because he found himself continually falling short of his own “wildly unreasonable” expectations.
“I’m just generally pretty hard on myself, and I think a lot of people that are good at what they do expect a lot of themselves. So I think that while it might not be the best thing for performing at your highest level, those expectations are also something that drives you to be good,” Young said.
“I kind of am starting to learn to maybe let go of them a little bit, and kind of just focus on where my feet are.”
Holding his family and the Players Championship trophy Sunday evening, Young didn’t have to look down at his feet to know the special place in which he found himself.
Top: Cameron Young reacts after winning at TPC Sawgrass.
