After ‘unacceptable’ month, Cameron Young changes putters and shoots 62 solo at TOUR Championship

ATLANTA – As the putt crested the fall line and picked up speed toward the cup, Cameron Young began the dreaded early walk. This ball was headed for the fringe, he thought, and an opportunity for eagle looked destined to become a disappointing par. “Terrible pace,” he would say later.

Good thing the line was right.

Young’s eagle attempt ran right into the hole, rattling around and staying down, igniting a crowd around the 18th that had unexpectedly gathered to watch the first tee time of the day finish on Friday.

After a month of slogging through maddening play, culminating in an even-par round on Thursday that put Young in last place of the 30-man TOUR Championship field, the stroke of luck was a welcome one. It capped an 8-under 62 second round that rocketed Young from worst to first on the leaderboard and validated a change he made earlier in the week.

“My level of frustration has been pretty high for four or five weeks,” Young said. “I have played okay and putted poorly and finished in positions that I feel like are unacceptable, to be brutally honest.”

That frustration led to a notable tweak. Young swapped putters ahead of the week, setting his Scotty Cameron Phantom 9.5R Tour Prototype to the side in favor of a similar model with a “simpler look.” The new putter is the Phantom 10.5 Xperimental Prototype.

“I just pulled it out of the bag on Monday, hit a few with it, and never put the other one back,” Young said.

It wasn’t as random as that sounds.

Young and his Titleist team have been “working” on the putter for a while. Young briefly put it in play during the Travelers Championship in June, though it was only a one-week swap before returning to his gamer.

After a torrid start on the greens earlier this year, Young’s putting weakened considerably this summer. While he was once inside the top 10 in Strokes Gained: Putting, Young is now outside the top 100. Young has lost strokes on the greens in five of his last eight events. Even in his runner-up finish at The Open Championship last month, the putter was the weakest part of his game. That week at Royal Birkdale was an outlier in Young’s recent form. He has only one other top-20 finish in his last nine starts.

Young’s Friday 62 is his second-best round of the year, and while the putter led the way, everything clicked. Young hit 13 fairways and 14 greens. He was 7-under through 11 holes and in a groove. Young credited that, partially, to playing alone. J.J. Spaun’s withdrawal during the first round meant one player would play solo each of the next three days. Young, in last place, earned that distinction.

Once Young got past the weirdness of only hearing one name announced on the first tee, that unusual situation worked to his benefit. With fresh greens and the whole golf course in front of him, Young made five birdies on his outward nine and added two more on the 10th and 11th holes. Four of seven birdies were converted from outside 10 feet. He gained nearly four strokes on the greens alone.

“You're not waiting on anybody. You kind of just like – you just keep going. You don't do anything that isn't at your own pace,” Young said. “You're never waiting. You're never rushing. In that sense, it's pretty nice.”

And as the first tee time out, there’s nobody to hold you up. Though it also means nobody is there to congratulate you on a great round. As Young fist-pumped the unexpected eagle on the last hole, he pretended to shake the hand of his invisible playing partner – a moment of levity after a trying month.