Smylie Kaufman suggested what the missing ingredient is that is preventing Cameron Young from realising his potential and winning on the PGA Tour after his performance at the Rocket Mortgage Classic.
Cameron Young would have been tipped by many to at least contend at the Rocket Mortgage Classic in Detroit after his performance at the Travelers Championship. Young, of course, shot a 59 in round three to bring himself back into the mix.
And he went into Sunday in Detroit just one shot off the lead, so it appeared to be a perfect opportunity for the 27-year-old to get the job done and secure his maiden victory on the PGA Tour.
He was still in the mix at the turn, with Young one under par for his day. However, things started to fall apart a little after the turn, with Young, at one stage, snapping his driver after a wayward tee shot.
Cameron Young’s missing ingredient
He would finish with two bogeys in the final three holes to finish three shots back of Cameron Davis, but he has emerged as one of the main talking points from the event.
Young clearly has the quality to compete with the best, having registered five top 10 finishes at the major championships already. But something is clearly preventing him from taking that final step, and speaking on The Smylie Show, Smylie Kaufman claimed that he desperately needs to work on his mental game.
“Let’s dive into Cam Young, my one and done pick, my hero this week, I was cheering for Cameron Young this week harder than I’ve ever cheered for him in my life, and once you start rooting for somebody, you really start to pay attention to every single thing that they do,” he said.
“I felt like I was a friend watching from afar, and I just felt like I needed to just go up to him and be like, ‘dude, snap out of it’. Because when you watch Cam Young, I’m telling you, two or three times today, I was doing some work today on the computer and I have the golf on, and I hear this sound coming off of a face, and I was like, ‘wow, who is that?’ Every single time it was Cam Young, and I thought that said everything you needed to know about Cameron Young, which is undeniable power and just raw talent and skill, but one of the biggest ingredients missing, that I feel like Trevor nailed right at the end, because Colt said, ‘what’s the takeaway this week’, and Trevor said, ‘you know what, he’s got to start working on his mental game’.
“And that is exactly what I’ve been noticing, and what Trevor was able to take away from the back nine on a Sunday, is that he’s too hard on himself. He is way too hard on himself, and I wonder if he’s just a little too proud to work on his mental game, because what I see is somebody who has really high expectations of himself and wants perfection, and demands it out of himself, out of his team, and doesn’t it feel like a player like him, the longer this goes along and he doesn’t look himself in the mirror, maybe this is the week in which he says, ‘you know what, I need to be kinder to myself’.”
A shame if American does not now act
Anyone who has played the game will know that getting angry on the golf course rarely leads to good results, and only tends to make things worse.
Of course, the professionals are much better at being able to harness their frustration and use it to fuel them, but Young looked like someone who wanted to be anywhere but on the golf course on Sunday, when he really was not out of the running by any means.
Players are seeing more and more gains from the things they do away from the golf course these days, so it would be a surprise if Young did not look to make changes in the near future.
In fact, it would be a shame if he did not.
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