Written by Staff @PGATOUR
CROMWELL, Conn. — Cameron Young’s morning started like any other. He woke up (too early for his liking), made his way to TPC River Highlands and grabbed a coffee. He saw his physio before heading to the range about an hour before his 9:45 a.m. tee time.
His routine was normal. Everything felt the same. The one difference? “I chunked a few less on the range than I did yesterday,” Young said.
The day ended unlike any in Young’s career.
Young made two eagles, seven birdies and zero bogeys en route to an 11-under 59, the 13th sub-60 score in PGA TOUR history and first since Scottie Scheffler did so at TPC Boston in the 2020 FedEx St. Jude Championship.
Young still finished one shot short of the TPC River Highlands course record. Jim Furyk shot the only 58 in PGA TOUR history in the final round of the 2016 Travelers.
“It's certainly pretty cool. It's fun to have your name on a list that short,” said Young, 13-under overall.
It was a remarkable, unexpected Saturday surge. TPC River Highlands is known to give up low scores, joining Greenbrier as the only two TOUR stops to yield two sub-60 scores. That it happened Saturday with soft, benign conditions was not surprising. The surprise was that it came from Young. Before shooting 66 in the second round of the Travelers, Young had carded 10 consecutive rounds of par or worse. His T9 at the Masters in April was his last top-30 finish. His range session on Saturday didn’t feel great, a continuation of those less-than-stellar feels. But as the round started, “things just started coming down close to the hole.” Or sometimes straight into the hole.
Young made two eagles, neither of which came on the par-5s. Young holed out for eagle on the par-4 third hole, landing his pitching-wedge approach from 142 yards to within feet of the cup before it dropped in for a deuce.
Cameron Young holes out from 142 yards for eagle at Travelers
Later, he drove the green on the 280-yard par-4 15th, hitting 3-iron off the tee that landed short of the green, slowly trundled onto the putting surface and stopped 4 feet from the hole. He converted that for another eagle.
Cameron Young's awesome tee shot leads to eagle at Travelers
Those moments of brilliance were surrounded by occasional moments of erraticism. Young hit just six fairways and was forced to attack TPC River Highlands’ small greens from out of position. Players have spent much of the week harping on the importance of driving accuracy as it had been hard to control shots from the thick rough, but Young had no such issues. He hit 15 greens and converted two of his birdies after hitting in the rough off the tee. Fittingly, Young had to scramble at the 18th to secure his spot in history.
Standing in thick rough left of the fairway and just in front of a bunker, 117 yards from the pin, Young called back to a similar shot from the 16th hole on Friday. He could only advance the ball about 100 yards in that situation, but it came out straight. If he tried to get any more out of this shot, Young wasn’t sure where it would end up. He took his medicine, hit his approach 101 yards up near the front of the green, and focused on the up-and-down.
“I've been chipping really, really well the last couple weeks. That was one that I was really felt pretty good over and it came out a touch slow,” Young said. “I just mish*t it.”
Cameron Young dials in approach to set up birdie at Travelers
The result was a 10-foot right-to-left sliding par putt. Young dripped the putt in, emphatically pumping his fist as it dropped.
Young made more than his fair share of 50/50 putts. Using a new blacked-out Scotty Cameron Phantom 5.5 prototype for the first time this week, Young holed 115 feet of putts, gaining more than two strokes on the greens.
“I would have preferred not to have to make a 10-footer, but I did and thankfully it went in.”
The cadence to Young’s 59 was touch-and-go. The round started blazing. He made birdie on Nos. 1 and 2 before holing out for eagle at the third. He poured in a 20-foot birdie putt on the fourth to move to 5-under for the day. Three straight pars kept it from a potentially record-breaking front-nine, but Young added birdies at Nos. 8 and 9 to shoot 28. At that point, it was all systems go to sub-60. Instead, Young made three pars to start the back nine, including the 11th, where he missed a 12-foot birdie putt. He birdied the gettable par-5 13th but still appeared to be running out of holes. Then he hit a towering 3-iron on the 15th that cozied up next to the hole and reinvigorated Young’s charge.
“I've hit that club everywhere and I finally hit one just straight at it,” Young said. “I think I said something to the effect of, ‘just give me all the right bounces.’ And it did. I mean, where that ended up would be a great pitch from the front of the green. So it's, you know, a really good swing and a great strike, but for it to end up somewhere that you can basically tap it in for two is not likely. You could hit that same shot a hundred more times and you would get two on that plateau right here.
The eagle at 15 moved Young to 10-under. He missed a 7-foot birdie putt on the par-3 16th, but hit another superb iron from the 17th fairway that stopped 5 feet from the hole. Young calmly converted the putt, stepping to pick the ball up before it even reached the hole.
“I didn't think about it too much kind of the middle that have back nine,” Young said of the possibility of 59. “Just because it didn't really feel all of a sudden like anything was going in after 10, 11, 12. Then, all of a sudden, I had a putt for 59 on 18.”
