Forgotten Ryder Cup snub sets up redemption—or chaos

Welcome back to the Monday Finish, where we’re just a couple wins from the Ryder Cup conversation. To the news!

GOLF STUFF I LIKE

Revenge tour.

Because of the Netflix episode and because of his subsequent surprise captaincy, you very likely remember that Keegan Bradley was snubbed from the 2023 U.S. Ryder Cup team that headed to Rome. Bradley was No. 11 on the list but was passed over while Nos. 12, 13 and 15 (Sam Burns, Rickie Fowler and Justin Thomas) were selected instead.

What you might have forgotten — because he had no Netflix episode and because he speaks softly, when he speaks at all — is that Cameron Young was No. 9 on that year’s list. Young was clearly a mega-talent; entering that decision he’d finished T8 or better at four of his previous seven majors, he’d logged 10 top-three finishes worldwide in his previous two seasons and he’d made the U.S. Presidents Cup team the fall prior, as runaway Rookie of the Year. But a middling stretch of early-summer golf was enough for the powers that be to leave him off the list. Would he have been selected if he’d had the same results but different friends? That was worth wondering, if tough to say for sure. Young became something of a forgotten snub. But there was one person who didn’t forget: Young himself.

While we heard from Bradley in the days that followed that 2023 decision, Young disappeared for two months. When he resurfaced at the World Wide Technology Championship in Mexico, he was measured in his response and said how thankful he’d been to spend extra time with his family. But he was also defiant.

“I think I walk away from it thinking, maybe I feel like I should have made the team but it wasn’t up to me. And two years from now, if I put myself in a position where they don’t have a choice, that’d be the better way to do it,” he said then.

Here we are, two years later. And Young has been clear about his intentions.

As early as Friday at the Wyndham Championship, Young admitted that he was thinking big-picture.

“I’ve got a goal. In the middle of September I’d like to be in New York playing on that Ryder Cup team,” he said.

On Saturday he admitted a little more. That playing at Bethpage would be a dream, for one thing — “one of my favorite golf courses in the world,” said the native New Yorker — but also that the previous Ryder Cup cycle had left him motivated.

“Obviously I’d love to make it. It hurt pretty bad to miss it a couple years ago. I was ninth on the points list and didn’t get picked, so I was a bit frustrated with that,” he said. “Set out the year to give our captain no choice, and I don’t know if I’m in a position to do that or not, but it would take some really good golf between now and then.”

Young followed that with some really good golf. He blitzed the Wyndham field; in the end his winning margin was six strokes and could have been eight or 10 or more. He didn’t just sneak cross the winning threshold — he burst through it like the Kool-Aid Man.

Young’s summer turnaround hasn’t been random.

He changed caddies ahead of the Truist Championship in May, hiring fellow Wake Forest Demon Deacon Kyle Sterbinsky, and logged three top-seven finishes in his next five starts.

“Some of it is just grinding through tougher times and finding better ones. He’s one of my best friends, a college teammate. He’s great at reading greens,” Young said. He’s gained strokes putting in seven of nine starts since then and led the Wyndham in strokes gained putting; these three months have been by far the best putting performance of his pro career.

Young changed golf balls, too — to a mysterious Titleist ProV1x prototype, “something we’ve worked on over the last nine, 10 months,” he said. Young has always been a high-spin player; it’s fair to assume this new ball helps reduce spin.

One other intriguing change: Young said that about 10 days ago he went back to hitting draws, something he’d done when he first turned pro.

“In trying to learn some more shots, I kind of went the other way,” he said. In other words, in chasing a more neutral ball flight he feels like he lost some of his swing identity and some of his repeatability. This week he committed to hitting draws everywhere.

“I’m sure there’s a couple you could go back to some right pins where conventional wisdom says don’t start it right of the right fringe, but I told myself I was going to do it and stuck to it all week,” he said. He talked about not having to “start over” ahead of each shot. “I think it might be difficult in some spots, but right now it seems like maybe part of the answer, who knows,” he shrugged.

Finally Young said he has been working on his mindset. His rookie year he’d finished second so many times that he got sick of contending without winning. More recently, though?

“I started playing worse and the good finishes were less frequent, and I became happier about those good finishes, I think,” he said.

Why did Young win this time and not the others? It’s impossible to isolate a single variable; it’s some unsolvable combination plus the right time, right place, right whims of the golfing gods. But now Young has ditched the forever-bridesmaid moniker and is up to No. 15 in the Ryder Cup ranking, too. He’s planning to continue that climb these next two weeks as the playoffs begin. It’s been feast or famine since Young’s caddie switch in May; in nine starts he has four finishes of T7 or better as well as four finishes of T46 or worse. But it could be a redemption story for Young, and it would only seem fitting that his fellow snub from 2023, U.S. captain Keegan Bradley, would be the man to make the call.

There’s another particularly chaotic option on the board, too: the final spot on the U.S. team could come down to Young or Bradley. Redemption for one, heartbreak for the other, this time with Bradley in control of the machine.

WINNERS

Who won the week?

Miyu Yamashita and a wild “rookie” season

She’s technically a rookie on the LPGA Tour, but we should have seen Miyu Yamashita‘s first major championship coming.

In fairness it’s been tough to see anything coming on the LPGA Tour this season; following the AIG Women’s Open the league has now showcased 21 winners in 20 events (19 unique individuals plus the two-player Dow Championship). But Yamashita, the rising Japanese star who turned 24 on Saturday, has stacked up wins on the JLPGA for several seasons in a row (she’s won a dozen JLPGA events since 2022) and contended at multiple majors. She came in with three top-10s on the LPGA in her last five starts. And the win boosts her to No. 6 in the Rolex Rankings.

Yamashita joins Ayaka Furue, Mao Saigo and Yuka Saso as the fourth Japanese player to win a major in the last two years. She also led a group of three Japanese players in the top four at Royal Porthcawl. Most importantly she’s the winner of the final major of 2025 for either the men or the women.

And a nice frontrunner for Rookie of the Year.

Cameron Young and the death of a question

On Saturday night, before he went to sleep on a five-stroke lead, Young was asked whether he had a monkey on his back. I liked his answer.

“Not really. If you had asked me two years ago I’d probably say yes, but if you go back through, I finished second a bunch but I’ve gotten beat a lot. I’ve played some good golf on Sunday in really all those cases. So that’s all I’m trying to do tomorrow. I’m starting in a nice spot, so I’m just looking to try to beat second place by as many as I can.”

When Young bogeyed No. 1 it was impossible not to wonder if this was the beginning of another Sunday heartbreak. But his self-belief shone through; he’s never been a choker, he just hadn’t won. He responded to that bogey with a run of five consecutive birdies. The rest was history.

The other Young

You’d assume that Cameron was the only first-time winner of his surname on Sunday. But how ’bout 33-year-old Scotsman Daniel Young winning on home turf at the HotelPlanner Tour (formerly Challenge Tour)’s Farmfoods Scottish Challenge? He, too, entered Sunday with a big lead and he, too, stumbled out of the gate, making double bogey at No. 1. But he righted the ship, hit nearly every green the rest of the way and hung on for a one-shot win that moves him to No. 6 on the tour’s order of merit.

“I am lost for words,” said Young.

One more first-timer

Julian Suri won the Utah Championship on the Korn Ferry Tour, earning his first KFT title at 34 years old. Suri was a presence in the top 100 in the world back in 2017, when he won on the DP World Tour. Now he’ll have a realistic chance to get back to the PGA Tour as he’s up to No. 16 in the KFT standings.

NOT-WINNERS

A few notes on assorted others:

Charley Hull finished second place at the AIG Women’s Open. Hers was a stirring weekend charge; it’s worth remembering it that way even as the stats will show another heartbreaking near-miss.

Yani Tseng made the cut in Wales; while she finished T63 her journey to this point makes that a significant victory.

Jeeno Thitikul finished T30 in Wales but took over the World No. 1 ranking from Nelly Korda, who finished T36. Korda had held the crown for 17 months.

Mac Meissner finished solo second at the Wyndham and made a massive jump in the FedEx Cup; it wasn’t enough to get him into the playoffs but his move from No. 152 to No. 86 means he’s in a much better place heading to the fall.

Ditto for Alex Noren, who finished T3 to jump from No. 141 to No. 105.

And Joel Dahmen’s T15 finish has him back inside that magic top-100 number; he jumped from No. 101 to 93.

But it was Chris Kirk who emerged the lone player to start the week outside the playoffs (No. 73) and play his way in. He did so in methodical fashion, making birdie on two of his first five holes on Sunday and then making 13 pars to finish T5, jumping to No. 61 in the process.

Taylor Montgomery finished T2 at the Utah Championship, logging his sixth runner-up on the Korn Ferry Tour, tied for the most ever without a win.

Blades Brown, the heralded 18-year-old mega-talent, Monday qualified and then finished T7, earning Special Temporary Membership for the remainder of the 2025 season in the process.

Preston Summerhays, playing in his home state, finished T7; his uncle Daniel finished T22.

SHORT HITTERS

5 Tour pros who just missed the playoffs.

Davis Thompson

Thompson was T8 heading to No. 18 on Sunday and a par would have sent him through to the playoffs. Instead he missed the fairway and wound up with a short putt for par, which he missed. He finishes his regular season at No. 71, a devastating five points behind Matti Schmid, who birdied his final three holes.

Mark Hubbard

Hubbard began the week at No. 98 and needed a T2 finish to get the job done. He put together a heck of a weekend rally but wound up one shot shy of that T2; his T3 has him well positioned for full Tour status at No. 77 but he’ll no doubt leave Sunday searching for one fewer stroke.

Gary Woodland

Woodland’s comeback nearly got its latest inspiring chapter on Sunday; he entered the final round squarely on that top-70 bubble. But his even-par final round saw him slip from T9 to T23 and into 72nd place.

Nicolai Hojgaard (and Rasmus, too)

Nicolai rallied from four over par on Thursday to make the cut at three under on Friday, but because he entered at No. 71 needed to make something special happen on the weekend. Instead he finished T55, ending this segment of his PGA Tour season at No. 73 in the FedEx Cup. Ditto for his twin brother Rasmus, who finished T34 and settled at No. 85 for the year. Now it’ll be interesting to see if they head back to Europe in hopes of bolstering their Ryder Cup resumes while most of their competition plays the Tour playoffs.

Ben An

It was a promising middle of the season for Ben An, whose postseason status seemed likely after a T14 at the Travelers put him to No. 57. Instead he finished the year T60-79th-MC-MC-MC and was the lone player to slide from in (No. 69) to out (No. 74) at the Wyndham.

RYDER CUP WATCH

Young and wild.

On the U.S. side, Cameron Young reinserted himself in the Ryder Cup discussion, with bonus points for having won the New York State Open at Bethpage as an amateur. Keegan Bradley slightly complicated his own case with an MC. Andrew Novak has an uphill battle after an MC, too. And Ben Griffin improved his status somewhat with a T11 finish.

On the European side, there were two competing storylines. First there were those whose PGA Tour seasons have now ended — the aforementioned Hojgaards plus Matt Wallace, who finished T27 and failed to improve on his No. 92 status. And then there were those improving their standing: Aaron Rai (T5) and Matt Fitzpatrick (T8) moved up one spot each to Nos. 14 and 12 on Team Europe’s points list.

TEAM USA RYDER CUP RANKINGS

1. Scheffler 2. Schauffele 3. Spaun 4. Henley 5. DeChambeau 6. English 7. Thomas 8. Morikawa 9. Griffin 10. Bradley 11. McNealy 12. Harman 13. Novak 14. Cantlay 15. Young

TEAM EUROPE RYDER CUP RANKINGS (As of July 7)

1. McIlroy 2. MacIntyre 3. Fleetwood 4. Hatton 5. Lowry 6. Straka 7. R. Hojgaard 8. Rose 9. Aberg 10. Hovland 11. Wallace 12. Fitzpatrick 13. Detry 14. Rai 15. J. Smith

Complete standings here.

ONE SWING THOUGHT

From Cameron Young.

Young grew up playing Sleepy Hollow, which is an elite golf course with notably slopey greens. He guessed that helped him playing Sedgefield’s also-notably-slopey greens — and likely contributed to his standout weeks at Philly Cricket Club and Oakmont earlier this season. The basic theory: if you grow up on relatively flat greens it’s tough to adjust to putts that break a. ton.

“Growing up on greens like that I think it just, I think it just trains your mind to just see some higher lines,” Young said. “Out here [at Wyndham], I don’t know how many putts are missed low versus high. It’s got to be drastically on the low side through the week. So I think just growing up on those kinds of greens, you’re just more familiar with how to play some of those. It’s just ingrained into you from a young age.”

ONE BIG QUESTION

What does Rory’s skip mean?

We’re just a few years removed from Rory McIlroy helping to stabilize — and remake — the PGA Tour alongside Tiger Woods. One of the tenets at the time: the Tour’s biggest stars would play in all its biggest events. It’s notable, then, that McIlroy is the star who has missed by far the most Signature Events. When he skips this week’s FedEx St. Jude Championship, it’ll be the fourth he’s missed this year (the Sentry, RBC Heritage and Memorial).

This has rankled the anti-Rory crowd, but McIlroy has telegraphed since last year’s playoffs that he wouldn’t play this event. It’s the latest chapter in McIlroy’s separation from the Tour, which began the day it brokered its secret deal with LIV. Instead he’s focusing on an increasingly global schedule that includes trips to Ireland, India and Australia this fall as he plays more on his home DP World Tour. The question, then: does the Tour need to make some sort of adjustments given that arguably its biggest star has played just one (non-major) PGA Tour event in the U.S. since May 11?

ONE THING TO WATCH

Joel on Geno.

It’ll be reassuring for plenty of golf fans to know that Joel and Geno are still in near-daily communication and still, per Dahmen, best friends.

NEWS FROM SEATTLE

Monday Finish HQ.

Ballard FC lost in the finals of USL2 this weekend — congrats to the Vermont Green. If you understand any of those words you are in way deep on U.S. soccer. And if you’ve made it this far you’re way deep in golf, too…

We’ll see you next week!

Dylan Dethier welcomes your comments at dylan_dethier@golf.com.

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