Winning on TOUR isn’t easy, just ask top players Patrick Cantlay, Cameron Young

DETROIT – Don’t let Jackson Koivun fool you. It can be tough to win on the PGA TOUR.

Koivun made it look easy Sunday at the 3M Open, hoisting a trophy at 21 years old in just his third start as a pro. His future is undeniably bright, but ask any grizzled veteran out here at the Rocket Classic, and they’ll explain that there are many more ebbs than flows to tournament competition.

As an example, look no further than two men tied atop the leaderboard at 10-under par when they finished their second rounds at Detroit Golf Club.

Cameron Young and Patrick Cantlay would make any short list for the best players in the world, but each has trod a path where progress inside the ropes did not equate to results on the scorecard. One appears to have broken out of that cycle, while the other still seems firmly entrenched.

Next week at the Wyndham Championship, Young will defend a title on TOUR for the first time in his career. It’s a startling thought given his ascent in 2026, highlighted by his win at THE PLAYERS Championship, and one he seems poised to add to after tying the course record with a 9-under 61 Friday on the renovated Donald Ross design.

But entering the Wyndham last year, Young was facing questions about when he would get his first win on TOUR.

He’d had a number of close calls across his first 92 TOUR starts, including six top 10s in majors, but his trophy case was bare. Week in and week out, he could sense incremental progress – even though the tournament results sometimes left him frustrated.

“That’s the main difficulty of golf, I think,” Young said. “You wonder, ‘Am I missing something? Why is this the way that it is? Why is it not working?’ All those things.”

Young broke through in a big way last year in Greensboro, lapping the field en route to an eight-shot win. A standout performance at the Ryder Cup followed, and now he’s a Player of the Year candidate who could upgrade that status to favorite if he chases a runner-up result at The Open with a victory this week in Detroit.

“When it goes well, it feels totally the opposite,” Young said. “When it goes well, it feels like you will never play bad again. It just comes and goes. You kind of have to be ready for either one.”

Tied with Young on the 36-hole leaderboard, Cantlay is awaiting his watershed moment.

After amassing eight TOUR victories from 2017-22, highlighted by winning the FedExCup in 2021, Cantlay’s well has run dry. He hasn’t won in nearly four years, dating back to the 2022 BMW Championship.

This year hasn’t afforded him many opportunities to break the drought. In a season he described as “pretty mediocre,” Cantlay has three top-10 finishes in 16 starts but none better than a T7 result at the Valspar Championship in March. His last true chance to win a tournament came nearly a year ago, when he finished runner-up at the TOUR Championship behind Tommy Fleetwood.

At No. 43 in the FedExCup standings with the Playoffs looming, Cantlay is no guarantee to earn a return to East Lake for the 30-man finale – although he’s well aware of how quickly that trajectory can shift.

“Golf’s funny, you can change your whole season in a week or two,” Cantlay said after a second-round 64 (-6). “I feel like my game’s been heading in the right direction and I’ve been working hard, so I’m pretty optimistic about the end of the season.”

Cantlay finished second in his Rocket Classic debut back in 2022, and he’s once again in the mix thanks in large part to a turnaround on the greens. He entered the week ranked 92nd on TOUR in Strokes Gained: Putting, a metric that has been in steady decline for him since ranking 28th during the 2021-22 season when he last won. But he’s rolling them in through two rounds in Detroit, ranking fourth in SG: Putting while picking up nearly five strokes against the field.

While the Playoffs push will take center stage in the coming weeks, another notable incentive is also up for grabs for Cantlay.

The 34-year-old has made every U.S. Presidents Cup and Ryder Cup team dating back to 2019, but he’s currently 17th in the U.S. points race and facing steep competition for a potential captain’s pick, even from an unexpected upstart like Koivun.

Cantlay eschewed thoughts of Medinah on Friday, opting instead to focus on the task that lies ahead this weekend – with the opportunity to flip the script on his 2026 season.

“Wins can happen fast. You can get on a run and start playing well,” Cantlay said. “I think you’ve got to believe that that’s right around the corner. With the momentum I feel like I’ve been having in my game the last few months, it wouldn’t surprise me.”

While both are playing well at the halfway point, one will assuredly leave Detroit Golf Club without the trophy they’re both seeking. They could also both come up empty, given they’re far from the only notables in contention – Jordan Spieth (-6) is seeking his first win since 2021, while Rickie Fowler fired an opening-round 63 (-7) as he looks for his first victory since the 2023 Rocket Classic.

Whoever gets their hands on the hardware Sunday will have assuredly earned it. But they’ll also have made it seem easier than it probably felt, given the number of times that even the top names in the sport feel like they have all the pieces assembled but still come up short.

“At some point, it’s going to get harder, and at some point you’ll come out of that difficult period and it will feel easy again,” Young said. “It’s kind of just a game of being ready for whatever comes next.”