Monday Finish: Justin Thomas turns pressure into performance at WGC-Bridgestone Invitational

RIDGELAND, S.C. – Cameron Young now has a trophy to hold as a reward for his impressive debut campaign on the PGA TOUR. Young, a five-time runner-up last season, received the Arnold Palmer Award on Wednesday as the 2022 PGA TOUR Rookie of the Year. Both Young and Palmer were Wake Forest alums, and another former Demon Deacon, Webb Simpson, delivered the trophy to Young, as did Sungjae Im, the 2019 Palmer Award winner. Simpson and Im playfully stepped through a side entrance in the media center and interrupted the start to Young’s pre-tournament press conference at THE CJ CUP in South Carolina to deliver the news. With his parents watching from the back of the room, Young sat in his chair and grinned, never before so thrilled to be interrupted. Young follows his former Wake Forest roommate, Will Zalatoris, in winning the award. It is the first time players from the same school have won the top rookie award back-to-back. “Well, it’s very special,” said Young, who had a pair of third-place performances (including the PGA Championship) to go with his five runner-up showings, which included a solo second at the Open Championship. Young finished 18th in the final FedExCup standings. “I know the namesake Arnold Palmer obviously was a giant in the game of golf and we have him to thank for a lot of what we do today, what the PGA TOUR is,” he said. “To be related to that in some small way is very cool. I know we had a very strong rookie class and I know it’s voted by my peers, so it’s a huge honor to be thought of in that way, just to kind of finish the year that way.” Young said his season’s proudest moment was finishing second at the 150th Open Championship at storied St. Andrews. He drove the green and eagled the 72nd hole to shoot 65 on Sunday – including a blistering back nine of 31 – but still got clipped by another Cameron, Australia’s Cameron Smith. “They love golf over there,” Young said. “And to walk into kind of the town center to play the 18th hole at St. Andrews is different than anything you find anywhere else. So just knowing the history there, and to play well that week, was very cool.” It was a trip to Scotland and St. Andrews a decade earlier that had sparked Young’s love for the game. At that point, young Cameron, 13, was more into hockey and baseball than golf. But he and his parents – his father, David Young, who recently retired after a 21-year run as head professional at Sleepy Hollow Country Club in New York, and mother, Barb Jones, an avid golfer – visited North Berwick, Gullane, Crail and St. Andrews. It rained for four days. David has pictures of Cam, cold and wet, wearing his father’s rain jacket, which went to his knees. “I’m thinking, after this trip, this kid is never going to want to play golf again,” David said last spring at the PGA Championship. “But it did just the opposite. It got him excited about it. … He decided that golf was going to be his main sport, and he started working hard at it.” Young finished second in Strokes Gained: Off-The-Tee in the 2022 season, third in driving distance (319.3 yards) and was sixth in birdie average. In addition to finishing solo second at the Open, Young tied for second at the Sanderson Farms Championship, Genesis Invitational, Wells Fargo Championship and Rocket Mortgage Classic. He finished the season on the winning U.S. Team at the Presidents Cup at Quail Hollow. There is a lot for him to build upon moving forward. David Young, his son’s only teacher, said Wednesday there were two keys to his son’s successful season. For one, he improved his driving, adding more accuracy to his prodigious length; and secondly, he tightened up his short game, spending more time on chipping and putting. David traces that to the 2021 RSM Classic, where it was windy and it was tough to hit greens. Young watched his fellow competitors chipping to tap-in range while he would leave himself 5- and 6-footers for par. “It kind of made an impression on us that we need to put a little more time into that,” David said. “It paid some dividends.” Scottie Scheffler, now World No. 1, was the TOUR’s Rookie of the Year in 2020 without winning a tournament, and now he’s a four-time winner and major champion. He thinks big things are ahead for Young. “I’m sure you’ll see him have a breakout year and win a couple of times, be on the top of some leaderboards again,” Scheffler said Wednesday. “He hits it hard, he’s very confident. “With the way he drives the ball, there is no course on TOUR that he can’t compete on. He hits it as far as anybody and hits it as solid as anybody. He’s one of those guys when you see him with a hot putter one week, he’s going to be right there at the top of the leaderboard.” Young’s first PGA TOUR victory doesn’t feel far away. On Wednesday, he still got to lift a trophy, a well-deserved reward for an impressive season.

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FEATURED GROUPS The fight for positioning heading into the FedExCup Playoffs is beginning to intensify and this week’s PGA TOUR LIVE coverage sets us up with some bug guns trying to surge even further forward. We have proven winners on the dock with the likes of Justin Thomas, Patrick Reed, Marc Leishman and Rickie Fowler lined up among others at the Quicken Loans National – and there will also be featured hole coverage at TPC Potomac’s 14th and 17th holes. PGA TOUR LIVE will broadcast between 7 a.m. Eastern and 6:30 p.m. on both Thursday and Friday. The coverage will switch to Featured Holes at 3:30 p.m. Featured Hole Coverage consists of the 14th (Par-4) and 17th (Par-3) on Thursday and Friday.
 PGA TOUR LIVE also will be available on Twitter for approximately 90 minutes, beginning at 7 a.m. Here’s a look at this week’s Featured Groups. Click here to subscribe to PGA TOUR LIVE. (Note: FedExCup rankings in parentheses) Related links: Tee times | Field | Course THURSDAY Si Woo Kim (27), Jimmy Walker (99), Billy Hurley III (102): The PLAYERS Champion joins with the defending PGA Championship winner and the defending Quicken Loans National winner. Kim is always entertaining. You never know just which version of the young Korean star you’ll see. While he followed up his PLAYERS win with a missed cut and a WD he was in the thick of it at the U.S. Open before finishing T13. Walker has been putting fatigue issues behind him and building towards the major winning form of last year while Hurley III is looking to once again provide one of the more emotional performances of the season as he did on the way to victory last year. Tee time: 8:10 a.m. Eastern off 10th tee. Rickie Fowler (9), Marc Leishman (14), Adam Hadwin (12): Three winners this season headlined by Fowler who has been threatening to grab more trophies to go with his one from the Honda Classic. With two top-5’s in his last three starts, including contending heavily at the U.S. Open, Fowler is ready to go the extra mile. Leishman is desperate to make another statement in the FedExCup race as he takes his last start before the Open Championship. His third child, and first daughter, is due next week. He will take a mini break and as such wants to rack up another high finish. Hadwin continues to forge forward this season with the clear goal of making the Presidents Cup – Leishman is a likely teammate. Tee time: 8:21 a.m. Eastern off 10th tee. FRIDAY Patrick Reed (53), Billy Horschel (16). Bill Haas (26): Reed, fresh off a T5 finish last week, joins two former FedExCup champions in this exciting trio. Reed’s fireworks have been turning up of late, but only for three of four rounds. Is this the week he brings it together for all four? Six of his last seven results have been inside the top 25. We call that trending. Horschel is playing with a freedom after his win at the AT&T Bryon Nelson and the fact his off-course situation is more settled while Haas has quietly put together a consistent season and comes off a T5 at the U.S. Open. Tee time: 8:10 a.m. Eastern off 10th tee. Justin Thomas (3), Kevin Chappell (25), Wesley Bryan (24): Thomas will be ready to roll. The disappointment of missing out at the U.S. Open coupled with last week’s missed cut will have his competitive juices flowing. Not to mention he watched Jordan Spieth win again – and called the bunker shot – which will have him wanting to add a fourth win on the season. Three top-10s in his last five starts… expect great things. Joining Thomas are fellow winners this season in Bryan and Chappell. Chappell loves tough courses, Bryan loves using his imagination. Both sit inside the top 25 of the FedExCup looking to move in deeper. Tee time: 8:21 a.m. Eastern off 10th tee.

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Hideki Matsuyama was surprised when a rain delay disrupted his hot play on Quail Hollow’s back nine. But he welcomed this interruption, even if it threatened his momentum. “I was grateful for the rain delay because I was getting tired,â€� Matsuyama said. “I was able to lay down in the locker room and get some rest.â€� August’s heat and humidity wasn’t the cause of his fatigue. No, it was his play. “I think what was making me tired was I wasn’t hitting my driver like I wanted to,â€� Matsuyama said. “I was hitting fairways but I wasn’t getting the crisp contact that I was hoping for with my driver.â€� These are the words of someone who just shot a bogey-free 64, the low round of the week, to share the lead at the PGA Championship. Matsuyama, though, is known for his high standards, and even Friday’s round couldn’t meet them. He had no problem choosing Friday’s best shot. It was an 8-iron to 7 feet on the par-3 17th hole that set up his fifth birdie in six holes. As for his worst? “There were too many. I can’t count them all,â€� he said. “Somehow, my worst shots were finding the fairway.â€� Matsuyama is one of the PGA TOUR’s best ball-strikers, but he’s seemingly never satisfied with how he’s hitting the ball. His one-handed follow-throughs and disgusted demeanor that precede his ball landing close to the hole have become the subject of Internet satire. At 8-under 136, Matsuyama shares the PGA Championship’s 36-hole lead with Kevin Kisner. They were two strokes ahead of Jason Day (70-66) when the second round was suspended by darkness after the afternoon’s rain delay. Matsuyama, 25, is trying to become the first player from Japan to win a major. He’s already won three times this season, including Sunday’s victory at the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational, and is the FedExCup leader. His final-round 61 was his second-best putting round of the season, according to strokes gained: putting. He switch to a new putter, a TaylorMade TP Mullen, at last week’s World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational. Matsuyama also won this season’s WGC-HSBC Champions (by seven) and the Waste Management Phoenix Open. His strong ball-striking sets up best for the major championships, where conditions are toughest. He’s finished in the top 15 of the year’s first three majors, including a career-best T2 at the U.S. Open. Matsuyama needed just 23 putts Friday, tying his personal record for fewest putts in a round. His +4.5 strokes gained: putting also is the top single-round mark of his career (Note: Strokes Gained statistics not official until round’s end). “Twenty-three putts just means I missed a lot of greens,â€� Matsuyama said. He missed six greens, to be exact, and five fairways Friday. But his iron shots that did find the green were close to the hole. He only had to make two putts longer than 8 feet Friday, a 22-footer for par on No. 9 and an 11-footer for birdie on the 12th hole. Matsuyama has been one of the TOUR’s best ball-strikers since turning pro in 2013. It his putting that determines his fate. A hot putter helped him post four wins and two-runners-up in a six-tournament span that ended with the SBS Tournament of Champions in January. His performance on the greens cooled after that, but has picked up again recently. “I wish I knew (why),â€� he said. “The greens here at Quail Hollow, as you know, are really fast. And there’s a lot of putts that honestly, I’m not trying to make. I’m just trying to get it up near the hole, and a lot of them are going in.â€�

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