FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — Consider this your “silver linings America” post as we approach the afternoon fourball session on Saturday with the home team trailing 8½ to 3½ and seemingly on the verge of a historic and very embarrassing home loss. Nevertheless, although the news is dire, it’s not universally dire, and that’s thanks to New York native Cam Young emerging as one of the team’s few bright spots.
Paired with Bryson DeChambeau in the morning foursomes session on Saturday, Young emerged with a 4-and-2 victory to move to 2-0 for the event, and it wasn’t just that he won. In fact, he was spectacular, just as he was spectacular in Friday afternoon fourballs, winning in the most lopsided blowout of the event, 6-and-5 with Justin Thomas. We can tackle all this from a few angles, but let’s start with the stats—according to Data Golf, Young had the highest strokes gained on Friday afternoon of any player, edging out his partner Thomas and Euro powerhouse Tommy Fleetwood, and on Saturday morning he averaged over two strokes gained, just ahead of Fleetwood and Jon Rahm. He was the best iron player in both sessions, and he currently sits as the best player in the entire by cumulative strokes gained, ahead of Fleetwood, Fitzpatrick, Rahm and McIlroy. In short, as much as those reliable Euros are dominating the Americans, Young has been better than them all.
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“This is the kind of stuff you dream of,” he said on Saturday, “and we’ve performed well over the last couple days, and having gotten a few points on the board is pretty awesome.”
But let’s move past the analytics and look at what the man has actually done on the course. On Friday afternoon, almost every iron he touched turned to gold, and as you see from this compilation video, it was clearly infectious, with Thomas also playing lights out after a woeful morning loss:
Not that he wasn’t also draining putts:
On Saturday, he came out of the gates like a house on fire, delighting Richard Kind and Colin Jost with his approach on No. 1:
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A couple holes later he did this to put the Americans in the lead for the first time:
And he never let up. On eight, he hit a 200-yard shot on the par-3 to two feet to increase the lead to 2 up, and with a chance to win the match on 16, he bombed a 334-yard drive and then buried the 10-foot putt to clinch.
It was a consummate masterclass from Young in front of his own fans, and it was pretty good for DeChambeau, too, who had played beautifully on day one but went 0-2 because his partners in both Friday sessions were the literal worst players on the course. Now he’s got a point, too, and both will be out in the afternoon (albeit it with different partners). If the U.S. has any prayer of making this close heading into Sunday—and to be clear, they probably don’t—that hope will rest on the shoulders of Cam Young, who has been a legitimate star amid the darkness of the American campaign.
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