Cam Young’s walk-in-the-park win at Doral included something rarely done there in 50 years

One of the surest signs of a great tournament performance is how boring it might appear to be. Not the golf so much. That’s easy to appreciate and fascinating to watch. But high-quality displays tend to render the competition, well, uncompetitive.

Cameron Young never looked like the was going to lose the Cadillac Championship on Sunday at Trump National Doral in Miami. Then again, he never looked like he would lose on Saturday. Or Friday. Or after his opening 64 on Thursday. The New York Knocker was in control all the way in a wire-to-wire victory that not only subdued an elite field but also bled red at the so-called Blue Monster.

Starting the day with a six-stroke lead over World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, Young put together a perfunctory but ultimately pleasing four-under 68 that enabled him to ease home by the same margin for his third career PGA Tour title and second win in his last four starts. He completed 72 holes in 19-under 269 with the second wire-to-wire victory on tour this year and third in the 50-plus years of tournament play at Doral, hosting its first tour event since 2016.

“I think when the golf course is difficult, when the conditions are difficult, that tend to make it easier for me mentally. Yeah, that's a big part of keeping yourself in it out here,” said Young, who led the field with 24 birdies, something that’s not supposed to happen on the Blue Monster. “It's difficult with the wind and the conditions were pretty benign today, but it is still a hard golf course and thankfully I was able to stay where my feet were and hit a bunch of good shots.”

Young, 28, joined Tiger Woods and Steve Elkington as the only men to win the Players at TPC Sawgrass and then tame the Blue Monster in the same year. He pocketed $3.6 million in winning his first signature event. Young entered the week ranked fourth in the world. He has to be considered a favorite in two weeks in the PGA Championship at Aronimink Golf Club near Philadelphia.

You know who appears to be a shoo-in for second place at Aronimink? Scheffler, who is the defending champion. And we are only sort of joking.

As has become his habit this year, the Texas native took Thursday off and it cost him. Scheffler leads the tour in scoring average at 68.22, which is amazing when you have to factor in his mundane Thursday’s in which he is ranked 72nd at 70.25. Not horrible, but he keeps spotting the field too many shots, which is how he has ended up in second place for the third straight start going back to the Masters. He has piled up 13 runner-up finishes next to his 20 victories. But having played three of four rounds with Young at Doral, Scheffler knew nothing but his best was going to stop a player who has figured out how to unlock the potential that always had been there when he was racking up seven runner-up finishes of his own before a breakthrough win in August at the Wyndham Championship.

“I've always been very impressed with Cam's game,” said Scheffler, who also shot 68 for 13-under 275. “This week he hit a lot of quality shots. A lot of quality iron shots, quality tee shots, especially on the holes where it really matters. There are some tee shots out here that are really difficult and he stepped up and hit the shots. On the greens he was unbelievable this week. First 27 holes I don't think he missed anything really. It was nuts. Guy was just holing everything. When you're hitting really good shots and holing a lot of putts that's a recipe to run away with a golf tournament.”

Which is exactly what unfolded.

With tee times moved up and the field playing preferred lies after more than an inch of rain had soaked the Monster, only Young was going to beat Young, and early on he gave it a shot when he called a penalty on himself on the second hole. Scheffler had birdied the par-5 first to gain a shot and then Young saw his ball roll forward slightly as he addressed it in the fairway at No. 2. Television replays could not pick up any movement, but Young called in a rules official and accepted a one-shot penalty dispassionately.

“Your heart sinks when you see it move, but it moved,” said Young, who equaled Hubert Green in 1976 for the largest margin of victory at Doral. “That's part of what golf’s about. There's no one who's going to give me a penalty there but myself.”

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What occurred next sent a signal that he wasn’t going to buckle. Not one bit. Young put his approach from 159 yards 13 feet short of the hole and then calmly rolled in the par save. He followed by making a 12-footers for birdies at Nos. 3 and 5, and even a couple of bogeys on the inward nine—Young had only five all week—only made it a bit less like the butt-whooping that it already was.

“Winning is really hard,” Young said, countering the previous assertion of how easy it appeared. “At no point did it feel easy, did it feel like the tournament was over. Even the last couple holes, there's a lot that can happen and you're never quite sure what the guys in front of you are going to do, the other guys in your group. So it was really just a matter of keeping my head down and trying to play good golf all the way through to the finish.”

As he approached the 18th green mid-afternoon Sunday, Young was greeted with a standing ovation that included President Donald Trump—a fellow New Yorker—who had arrived at the course around noon. Not a bad salute for your efforts. Later, he got to shake the president’s hand.

What’s different about Young these days? Well, his putting is vastly improved. He led the field in strokes gained—putting at plus 7.062 strokes. But there is also something deeper going on. His head has caught up to his hands.

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“I think the self-belief just continues to build,” he said. “I put myself in plenty of good places over the course of the last four, five years of the recently I've started to come out on the better side of it.

“Once you've done it once, I think it is easier to do it again,” Young added. “But at the same time, the golf hasn't changed tremendously. I think I keep just slowly improving in, I think, all the different areas of the game. I think I'm slightly better just everywhere than I was a year ago. That's the goal, just keep incrementally getting a little bit better. When you do that, I think the good weeks come together and they look more like this as opposed to finishing second, third, fifth, where you had a chance to win and didn't. So it's just very, very small progress and it's showing up in the results.”

Young is the season’s third multiple winner, joining Matt Fitzpatrick and Chris Gotterup, and it stands to reason that he might add to his trophy case again before the year is up. Including a T-3 at the Masters, where he led after 54 holes, Young has five top-10 finishes in nine starts, and coming up, he will get a crack at the next two majors in eastern U.S. venues, with the U.S. Open in his home state of New York at Shinnecock, in Long Island.

Guess what? Those are difficult golf courses.

That has to give Cameron Young a very warm feeling. And send chills to his opponents.