Inside Cam Young’s 2 hour belief … and 1 sad minute

Southport, England – Kyle Sterbinsky stood on the far left side of the Open Championship driving range and looked… warm. The sun seemed to cover his entire face as he stared into the distance at the large, golden scoreboard perhaps 250 yards away. He would not be able to scan the scene for information because his eyes were useless. He and Cameron Young, the star golfer he played for, had reached those moments of pregnancy when golf history was made. All they could do was listen.

There are two schools of thought that emerge on Sundays in golf tournaments. Either you want to be the man in the house – take off your shoes, put on a hat and look backwards, watch your score – or you want a ball and holes to play to beat the man in the house.

About two hours exactly before this driving incident, at 4:36 pm, you wanted to be Cam Young. Although he sounded like a loser, he was the man of the house.

Young had just shot his best round of the week, a 64 that pushed him to a score of 72 on nine under. He had thought, while playing the 18th hole, that 10 under would do it. He pulled a 6-iron into the fairway bunker, opened the clubface and made a swing that he will think about for a very long time.

Young’s ball hit the face of the fairway, went straight up and finished maybe 30 feet. He quickly recovered for bogey. It was the best he could do…but suddenly it seemed like it wasn’t enough.

When he met the media, Young didn’t think he had done enough to win the tournament. He had spent the afternoon busy with his technique, counting his breaths between shots, 10 breaths at a time. Now he wished he had spent a few beats thinking 10 less. He suffered a Saturday round in which he shot a 73, a C-plus day, in his assessment, filled with a number of bad breaks. That is why Young promised reporters that he will start collecting his things immediately, so that he can do well.

He was clearly in no rush, answering 23 questions from the media, then making the 100-yard walk to the player’s clubhouse alone, staring at his phone the entire way. If he had dared to look up, he would have seen the navy Open flags above him, flapping louder than they had all day. Sterbinsky left the clubs at the clubhouse door, just in case.

Sterbinsky was sitting on the second floor eating, there was a plate of food in front of him and his girlfriend by his side. After watching 20 minutes of compilation, that happy thought popped up for the first time. We have done enough. That’s when it started to get numb, he said, as each top fell on the leaderboard. Sam Burns first, Si Woo Kim next, then Kiwi, Ryan Fox. Professional golfers and their caddies are trained not to look too far, but you can’t help it when you’re indoors and it’s beyond your control.

“Then,” said Sterbinsky, “we found ourselves walking alone.”

What should you do when a golf tournament falls into your lap? Sterbinsky, one of Young’s teammates at Wake Forest, had been looking for him for 14 months. He saw wins at Doral and TPC Sawgrass during that time, and managed a handful of big score misses. He had never seen anything like this.

“It was the first time I faced this kind of pressure and energy to play in the playoffs,” he said.

So he worked hard to achieve a kind of zen. Not too high, not too low. Know all the results. In silence and all the consequences.

The player’s clubhouse is temporary and made of steel and hard plastic for one week only. It might be sterile, but if you’re a man indoors, while the wind blows outside, it’s the perfect place to hang out and watch every player from recent past. It becomes more fun when those players are impressed by your score.

First Scottie Scheffler’s dad walked by, carrying his new cane, a gift from his son. Justin Thomas’ father plopped down next to Young, drinking a beer. Young ate a salad and sat next to his father, probably the only member of the Young Team with a positive attitude to handle the next few hours. David Young is a PGA professional who has seen the tension, the frustration, and the restless wait before.

After about an hour as clubhouse leaders, Sterbinsky went outside to take the call and was greeted by the entire golf world. Several broadcast cameras are set up at the entrance to the clubhouse. Another broadcaster had begged him to go upstairs to stop the Cameron Cam. Suddenly, everyone knew that Young and his caddy were in the center of the room. Sitting, waiting.

These moments of contention can fly by just as they can crawl slowly.

At 5:44, they watched Fox’s ball roll into the wall of the green.
At 5:51, they watched him make one helluva bogey.
At 5:57, Young emerged from the clubhouse next to his father and swing coach.
At 6:03, Cam moved the creases of the sweater and pulled it over his body. That night the sea breeze cooled everything.
At 6:07, he finished a short session of laying and began to make full changes.
By 6:10, three more cameras and 15 spectators had filled the lowest seat on the nearest stage.
At 6:13, Cam looked at the open app on his phone and saw Fox in another house.
At 6:18, they heard sympathetic groans from the bleachers at 17, maybe 300 yards away. Fox made a place where he could make a bird. Phew.

That’s when things went from over the moon to confidence. It was worth it. Fox was teeing off on the 18th, which had been a factory for golfers all afternoon. Of course Fox could make a 4 or worse on the second most difficult hole on the course. As they waited for Fox to make his shot, Young revealed how he hadn’t seen the R&A official in hours and wanted to know the playoff format.

Young began hitting low-ball drivers. If he turned 30 degrees, he would send one right up to Fox himself, playing 18. The broadcast cameras had been rolling over the man in the house for so long that they needed an emergency battery change.

What about Young’s phone battery? Maybe he had a chance to charge it while packing for his Monday flight home. He is famous for not having a social media presence, and promises that his phone uses craters during non-tournament weeks. But if you’re the man in the clubhouse? The phone becomes your pacifier. Texts are streaming in. You open the weather app and check the wind again. Check your teammates’ progress with the Open’s shot-tracking leaderboard. If Young had been looking at DataGolf as Fox walked up the fairway, he would have seen something else: The math gurus out there pegged his odds of winning at 67 percent.

Instead, Fox repeated on his screen, turned to his father and said two words: Eleven-seven. Fox had an 11-foot, seven-inch birdie and the Open Championship. It was 6:33 pm local time, about two hours before and one minute after Young told reporters he thought fewer than 10 would do the job.

Which brings us to that sun-baked look on the floor between Sterbinsky and the leaderboard in the distance. They had done everything they could. It was twenty-two seconds after Burns took his place, and they were silent.

When is it coming? When is it coming? Please, moan, please pierce.

Then they heard the worst thunder of their life. Ten less he did do the work. Ryan Fox had won the Open.

The man in the house had lost it.