Cameron Young
Charlie Crowhurst, R&A via Getty Images
Cameron Young sat for more than two hours on the edge of the biggest victory in his golf career and, in what seemed like an instant, it was gone.
Starting the final round of the Open Championship seven strokes off the lead, Young shot a 6-under-par 64 at Royal Birkdale to finish at 9-under par, leaving him to watch and wait to see if any of the handful of contenders could match or beat him.
It was the last person with a chance – Ryan Fox – who did that, holing an 11-foot birdie putt on the 72nd green to snatch the Claret Jug, leaving Young to ponder another near-miss in a major championship.
“I was really just proud of the way I put it together, the way I did it more than the round itself,” said Young, who had seemed to play himself out of contention with a third-round 73.
Once he got into contention on Sunday, Young thought 10-under par could be the winning total. He was right and he was one shot short, left to think about a bogey on the par-4 18th when his tee shot found a deep fairway bunker.
Rather than lay back off the tee on the closing hole, Young chose to be aggressive and paid the price when his tee shot rolled through the baked-out fairway into the bunker. Trying to hit a 6-iron from the sand, Young caught it thin and his ball caromed off the bunker wall into the rough, leading to the bogey.
“Felt like I had a chance to get the second [shot] on the green. I kind of had a wide open 6-iron. It was only 160-something yards to the front. So I felt like there was an off chance I could get something on the front edge,” Young said.
“I wasn’t trying to miss it thin, but did. I was very grateful it got out of the bunker.”
It was a finish that Young will remember for a while.
“One of the times you just wonder what you’ve just done a little bit,” he said.
“But I was trying to hit it on the green, to be honest. I felt like I could. I really felt like 10 (under par) had a good chance to win the golf tournament. It was just trying to win the golf tournament.
“I couldn’t lay it up anywhere great. … It just felt worth the risk.”
It was Young’s third top-five finish in his last six major starts and his second runner-up finish in the Open – he finished a stroke behind winner Cameron Smith at St Andrews in 2022.
Ron Green Jr.
