Young’s promise pays off with wire-to-wire victory
American Cameron Young secured a wire-to-wire victory at the AdventHealth Championship, defeating South African Dawie van der Walt by two strokes at 19-under at Blue Hills Country Club.
Less than a year ago Young had no status on the Korn Ferry Tour and now with Sunday’s win he becomes the first player to go wire to wire since Kramer Hickok at the 2018 DAP Championship.
Cameron Young (Credit: PGA Tour)
“It’s hard kind of to work through them at the moment, to be honest,” said Young. “Obviously the last hour or so I probably had a good feeling I was going to win, but it’s hard to get through those last few holes and, you know, hit the shots that I needed to hit. I was a little bit squirrelly down the stretch.”
It’s his first win on the Korn Ferry Tour and first as a professional for the 24 year-old.
Young is a former Junior Ryder Cup team member playing for USA in 2014 and finished 4th at the Junior World Cup in the Japan in the same year. He attended Wake Forest University where he also made the round of 16 at the 2016 US Amateur. A year before Young made it to the second round of the US Amateur at Olympic Fields, losing to Spain’s Jon Rahm.
In his senior year he had three collegiate victories from 12 starts for a scoring average of 70.56. His results earned Young an All-Atlantic Coast Conference selection three times (2017-19) and a Ping All-East Region selection those same years.
Young turned professional in 2020 with his best result a runner-up finish at the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Championship to add to his tied 6th at the Albertsons Boise Open.
His results saw him earn Special Temporary Membership on the Korn Ferry Tour. Young joined Will Zalatoris and Davis Riley (both in 2019) as the only three players to earn Special Temporary Membership over the past two seasons.
Sunday’s victory sees Young moving to a high point of 264th in the world rankings.
Aaron Baddeley was the best of the Australians moving up 17 spots with a final round of 66 to finish in a share of 35th position. Mark Hensby was the only other Australian to make the weekend finishing in 66th position.
Brett Drewitt, Rhein Gibson, Harrison Endycott and Jamie Arnold missed the cut.
