Sunday at TPC Sawgrass was set up to go one of two ways for Ludvig Aberg. Leading the field by three after 54 holes, the final round was bound to be either coronation or disaster.
The latter happened. And so did Cameron Young.
Young started the final round in solo third and four back of Aberg, but he birdied the iconic par-3 17th to take a share of the lead and then made a tournament-winning par on the 18th to claim his first Players Championship title.
It’s the biggest win of Young’s PGA Tour career and just his second victory overall following his title at the Wyndham Championship last August.
Young closed with a four-under 68, and at 13 under overall he beat Matthew Fitzpatrick by one. Aberg shot 76 and tied for fifth.
“This place has had my number the last few years,” Young said. “I’ve never really had a good finish here. And yeah, it is incredibly taxing. Every shot all day long you can get yourself into trouble. There’s no easy ones. There’s no givens. And you’re going to make mistakes. So it’s a great test of will, a test of patience and obviously a test of hitting some good shots. So I feel like I did a lot of those things really well this week.”
Aberg had a three-shot lead heading into the day over former college teammate Michael Thorbjornsen, but Thorbjornsen ejected from contention with a quadruple-bogey 8 at the par-4 4th hole. Aberg played good but not great golf on the front nine, making one birdie and one bogey to turn in even par and take a two-stroke lead over Ryder Cup teammates Robert MacIntyre and Fitzpatrick with nine to play. Soon Young joined that group at 11 under.
But things changed quickly for the leader on the back nine.
On the par-5 11th, Aberg made his first big mistake of the day, hitting his approach into the water and making bogey. As Aberg missed his par putt, Fitzpatrick, in the pairing ahead, drained his short birdie putt to tie the lead at 12 under. On the next hole, Fitzpatrick stuck it to 4 feet, made birdie and took the solo lead. And on 12 things went officially sideways for Aberg. He drew his tee shot into the water, missed the green with his next shot and made double bogey, dropping three shots in a matter of two holes.
Late in the day it became clear the winner would come from the penultimate pairing of Fitzpatrick and Young, who had to battle not only the Stadium Course’s watery finish but increasingly strong winds.
Fitzpatrick three-putted the 14th from 63 feet to make bogey and share the lead with Young at 12 under, but Fitzpatrick reclaimed the top spot by making a 13-foot birdie on 15.
Fitzpatrick and Young parred 16, and on the iconic par-3 island-green 17th Fitzpatrick played safely to the middle of the green and two-putted for par. Young took the aggressive line, stuck it to 10 feet and rolled in the birdie putt to make it a tie at 13 under with one to play.
“That wind was really difficult, downwind,” Young said. “I just so happened to have the best number you could have possibly asked for. I felt like if I hit just a full hard sand wedge it would carry that bunker by a yard or two, and trying to hit a softer gap wedge would have been a lot more difficult.”
On 18, Young went driver-wedge to 15 feet and made par. Fitzpatrick found the pine straw right of the fairway, had to punch out and then needed to make an 8-footer for par to force a playoff, but it caught the right lip and didn’t fall.
Young walked off the green with $4.5 million — and a winner of the PGA Tour’s biggest tournament.
