As the PGA Tour calendar rapidly approaches another major, Scottie Scheffler continues to be the best player in the world due to his consistent ability to contend in nearly every tournament.
Rory McIlroy is coming off his second consecutive win at The Masters, a remarkable achievement at one of the tour’s toughest golf courses. After a lengthy major championship drought, McIlroy finally got his career Grand Slam and seems set to be a threat in every big tournament moving forward.
But the hottest golfer in the sport right now might be Cameron Young.
Young’s run started at the Genesis Invitational, where he finished tied for seventh. Then at Bay Hill, one of the toughest courses on the calendar, he finished tied for third. He won the unofficial “5th major” at THE PLAYERS Championship a week later, before finishing tied for third at The Masters.
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A few weeks later, at a signature event at the fearsome Trump National Doral “Blue Monster” course, Young on Sunday finished out a dominant six-shot win. His second win of the season, a $3.6 million purse, -19 to Scheffler’s -13. And to top it off, President Trump was there to see it happen.
With the president in attendance, security and tournament procedures were drastically different than a typical Sunday. He was asked about it in the post-tournament news conference.
“Once you get out there … you’re out doing your job, but everything that leads up to that, you know, the place is obviously crawling in Secret Service and security and police, and it has a definitely a different feel,” Young said. “I came out to go down to the side door where we’ve been coming in the clubhouse all week and kind of had two guys step together and say, ‘Hey, we’re not letting anybody through this way right now.’ So, I was just walking in toward the locker room toward dining and had to turn around and walked all the way around the clubhouse to get back to that door. So, there’s little things like that that’s obviously different with the President here, and it changed the rhythm of the day a little bit to start, but it was already so thrown off by the delays that, you know, it didn’t matter too much.”
He also spoke to President Trump after the round, thanking him for hosting the tournament.
“He was just very complimentary, the way that he – you know, I’ve been fortunate to meet him before, and that’s especially with us golfers, it’s something he loves and I think appreciates how good everybody is on the PGA Tour,” he said. “So really just hugely complementary, and I, of course, thanked him for hosting us and that was about it.”
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Asked about the brief meeting with Trump, Young said he was “grateful” that they hosted the tournament there and that it was an “honor” to play with the president watching.
“It’s very unique,” Young added. “He’s nothing if not a very, very interesting man. He’s very powerful, and it’s an honor to get to play in front of him. Hugely grateful to him and his family and his organization that has these beautiful properties and allows us to come and play great golf tournaments on them. This is a special place and great championship golf course, I’m thankful to have it back in the schedule.”
It’s always refreshing in this day and age to hear an athlete speak about meeting with the president with reverence and appreciation, instead of taking the opportunity to make some kind of political point. Particularly when that president has an appreciation for their sport, like Trump clearly does with golf.
Young will look to win his first major at the PGA Championship at Aronimik starting May 14.
