On Saturday morning of the Ryder Cup, a man crouched behind the first green at Bethpage Black, watching intently as the first match of the morning session got underway. Bryson DeChambeau had placed foursomes partner Cameron Young in an ideal position, leaving him 74 yards from a perfect spot in the fairway. Young flighted a tidy wedge that bounced six feet past the hole and spun back inside of a foot. The man stood up, pumped his fist, and yelled, “Let’s go, Cam!” a loud cry by his typically soft-spoken standards. That man was Cam’s father, David Young, the only instructor Cam has ever had.
David’s fist pump was one of many Young would deliver on Saturday morning. Cam hardly missed a shot. He and DeChambeau went on to close out the European duo of Matt Fitzpatrick and Ludvig Åberg, 4 and 2. Through three sessions, the Americans trailed 8.5-3.5, but Young’s record stood a stout 2-0-0.
Two years ago, it would have been difficult to imagine Young establishing himself as one of the lone bright spots on the 12-man American roster. It would have been even more difficult to imagine his putter, so often his Achilles’ heel, transforming into a reliable weapon.
One of the game’s premier ball-strikers, Young frequently played himself out of contention with abysmal putting performances. At the 2023 Open Championship at Royal Liverpool, for example, Young entered Sunday in the final group alongside eventual champion Brian Harman. Young had dismantled the golf course from tee to green, but he squandered opportunity after opportunity on the greens. By Sunday’s end, he had settled into a tie for eighth, another elite ball-striking performance wasted.
Despite the putting woes, Young still had a strong candidacy to make the team in Rome. He finished ninth in the points list that year, the highest-ranking player to be left off the team. In the two years leading up to Rome, he had posted four top-10 finishes in eight major championship appearances, including near-wins at the 2022 PGA Championship at Southern Hills and the 2022 Open at St. Andrews. Only Rory McIlroy (seven) and Scottie Scheffler (five) recorded more top 10s in majors during that stretch.
Yet Young is not remembered as the biggest Ryder Cup snub of 2023. Perhaps that is due to a glaring hole his résumé contained at the time: zero PGA Tour wins. Or maybe it was a reflection of how media exposure and Netflix’s “Full Swing” shape public perception. Cam has never been one to seek out the spotlight. Hardcore golf fans weren’t sold on his game. Casual golf fans weren’t aware of his name.
At the 2025 Ryder Cup, all of that changed.
Bethpage was a fitting venue for such a dramatic shift in perception, and also a full-circle moment for Young. David, his father, served as the long-time head professional at Sleepy Hollow Country Club in Westchester County, about an hour’s drive from Bethpage Black. At the 2022 Open, a reporter asked Young about his improbable journey from the “streets of New York” to the links of St. Andrews. “I think the streets of New York is probably a stretch,” Young laughed. “I lived at Sleepy Hollow Country Club, where my dad is the head pro.”
David’s occupation afforded Cam the opportunity to start swinging a golf club at an early age. It was on the grounds of Sleepy Hollow that Cam learned the game under the tutelage of his father.
“I think he puts in just as many hours to my golf as I do. He’s with me every step of the way,” Cam said after being named a captain’s pick. “To get the opportunity to represent my country and play in a Ryder Cup is something that both of us have dreamed of for so long. It’s hard to put into words what it means to both of us, and we’re both certainly very excited.”
Cameron Young and his father, David, during the Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black (PGA of America)
It’s rare to see putting improvements as drastic as Cam’s. Entering 2025, he had ranked 68th, 158th, and 145th in Strokes Gained: Putting in his first three full-time seasons on the PGA Tour. In 2025, he improved to fifth on Tour, gaining more than 0.6 shots per round. “It’s just been really simple stuff. We’ve taken a really simple approach to it. Just alignment and setup. Getting more comfortable with those things being natural over the course of the last two years,” Young told Fried Egg Golf at the 2025 U.S. Open. “It’s been a while, it’s been a long work in progress, and I think I’m just starting to see some of the fruits of that.”
The work culminated at the Wyndham Championship in August, where he led the field in putting and captured his first career PGA Tour win by six shots. The improved putting proved instrumental in securing him a spot on the Ryder Cup team. “Cameron pounds the golf ball, and he’s putting it as good as he’s ever putted in his career,” captain Keegan Bradley said. “We’re very proud to have a New Yorker on our team and represent his country at Bethpage Black.”
Young has enjoyed his fair share of memorable walks down the fairways of the Black Course. He competed regularly throughout his junior golf career there, a course he considers one of his favorite places in the world. In 2017, at just 20 years old, he became the first amateur to win the New York State Open, tying the Bethpage Black course record with a 64.
At the Ryder Cup, he returned to Bethpage a more mature, polished player, stalking those same fairways four more times, except this time to the tune of a large hometown gallery chanting his name. However, not every match at Bethpage went exactly as planned. A narrow fourballs defeat on Saturday afternoon at the hands of Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry dropped Young to 2-1-0, but Bradley’s faith was unshaken. Facing a seemingly insurmountable 11.5-4.5 deficit entering Sunday singles, the Americans needed to sweep nearly every match on the final day. With next-to-zero margin for error, captain Bradley entrusted the opening spot to the golfer he believed in most: Cameron Young.
The task was tall: take down Justin Rose, a European Ryder Cup stalwart who had won both of his first two matches. What followed was an instant classic.
Young started the match by offering Rose a taste of his own medicine, rolling a 25-footer into the heart of the cup. One up. Rose punched back, winning holes 3 and 5. Young drained putts on Nos. 6 and 7 to reclaim the lead. Both birdied the par-4 ninth – Rose from the middle of the fairway, Young from the left-hand trees.
When the pair reached the 12th green, Young held a 2-up lead over the 45-year-old Englishman. After finding a rare, dreadful lie nestled in the chopped-down Bethpage rough, Young looked over a 12-foot tester for par as Rose assessed a four-footer of his own. With the complexion of the match in danger of flipping, Young stepped up and buried the putt. Rose uncharacteristically missed. Three up.
“Yeah, obviously went through kind of a range of emotions just through the whole day,” Young said after the match. “You know, got off to a good start, and kind of felt like nothing could go wrong, and then Justin Rose started doing some interesting things.”
Three-hole leads with six to play generally feel secure. Unless, of course, your opponent is one of the grittiest competitors ever to wear European colors. In quintessential Rose fashion, he didn’t quit. Following a lengthy rules dispute, Rose made one of the gutsiest up-and-downs you’ll ever see on Ryder Cup Sunday, pulling off a brilliant 70-yard shot into 13 from down by the 14th tee, up over a hill to five feet, before cashing in the birdie to win the hole. After another birdie on the 14th, a near-birdie on the 15th, and a birdie on No. 16, Rose had dug all the way back into the match.
{{inline-article}}
Back at the Masters in April, Rose closed with a flurry of six birdies in eight holes to force a playoff with Rory McIlroy. At the FedEx St. Jude Championship, he birdied four of his final five holes, ultimately prevailing in a playoff over J.J. Spaun. Rose is no stranger to a strong finish, and if momentum is a real phenomenon, surely Rose carried every ounce of it as he and Young made their way to the final hole all tied up.
As Young and Rose climbed the hill protecting the 18th green, palpable intensity filled the air. An American comeback was still a longshot, but the scoreboard had begun to bleed red. Any halved matches dealt a blow to the Americans’ hopes of winning back the Ryder Cup. The U.S. side desperately needed a full point from Young.
Rose had cozied a wedge to just under 14 feet, while Young sized up a 12-footer not too far from where Rose’s ball sat. Though Rose’s putt was farther from the hole, it was impossible to escape the feeling that he had Cam on the ropes. Putts like these had been the hallmarks of Justin Rose’s career. He craved moments like these. Rose struck his putt, only to watch the ball miss about a cup wide left of the hole. The spotlight shifted to Cam.
Under as much pressure as the sport can summon, Cam gripped the club that had repeatedly betrayed him at crucial moments throughout his career. Except this time, he wouldn’t be denied. He buried the putt in the center of the cup, pumping his fist as the crowd erupted.
Cam celebrated the win with his caddie and family members off the back of the 18th green. Twenty-five feet away, a gutted Justin Rose stared lifelessly down the 18th fairway. Perhaps he was replaying all of the shots down the stretch that could have tipped the match in his favor. Or maybe he was soaking in the scene, pondering if he had just played the final Ryder Cup match of his illustrious career.
A short distance from where Rose confronted what could be the end of his legendary Ryder Cup playing career, an emerging Ryder Cup force basked in the splendors of his accomplishment. Two years removed from being told his services weren’t needed in Rome, Cam had become the undisputed star of the American team, delivering as many points as any other American against the fiercest competition the Europeans could throw at him.
Ultimately, the American comeback fell just short. Yet amid a long line of U.S. players who have faltered under the brightest lights, a new star had blossomed – offering a glimmer of hope as a fixture of Ryder Cup teams for the next decade.
“You know, that last bit there where we were making a run…I haven’t felt anything like that playing golf before,” Young said. “That was truly unbelievable to watch one after the other just start making putts, fighting the way that they did. I’ve never seen anything like that, and I’ve never felt anything like that watching golf, playing golf, doesn’t matter. So I think it’s really just a testament to how much it means to all of us to be here and how much we all want to play well for each other. It was truly unbelievable.”
Looking ahead, few golfers have a brighter future than Cam Young. At age 28, he has just entered the beginning of his prime, equipped with the most complete arsenal of tools he has ever wielded. His Ryder Cup performance proved that he has the game to stand toe-to-toe with any golfer on any stage in the world. Once a massive weakness, his putter has developed into a reliable strength, one that didn’t crack in the heat of the most pressure-fueled arenas in all of golf.
Still, the only certainty in golf is uncertainty. Young could very well drift from elite-level ranks back towards the pack without ever competing in another Ryder Cup. Should Young continue his ascent through the professional golf ranks, however, and become a dominant force on Tour and a mainstay on future American Ryder Cup rosters, his rise to stardom will be traced back to an epic performance at Bethpage Black, just a short drive from where his story all began.
