After six Players Championships and a whole bunch of other Sunday afternoons at golf’s biggest events, I’ve developed an entirely unscientific theory about TPC Sawgrass’ famed Island Green 17th.
If you’re in the hunt late on Sunday and you fire for the flagstick side of the tucked Sunday pin placement, good things happen.
Cameron Young’s performance throughout the famed closing stretch at the Players Championship on Sunday deserves plaudits — he made pars on 16 while plugged in a bunker from 50 yards out and on 18 after hitting the longest drive in that hole’s history — but it was his tee shot in the 17th that I thought revealed the most about him. With Young’s tournament hopes hanging on a birdie on the hole, he stepped to the most terrifying tee shot at Sawgrass and delivered a seed straight at the flagstick. He was rewarded with a 10-footer for birdie that he drained, sending the crowd into a tizzy and tilting the balance of the tournament in his direction.
The thrust of my theory around the 17th has less to do with strategy than it does with gumption, and it can be distilled into the following sentence: You can’t bother playing TPC Sawgrass smartly. If you want to win on Sunday, you need: 1. birdies 2. risk tolerance and 3. guts. The kind of golfers who thrive in that kind of environment are the ones who view the course and the tournament not as something to be feared but as something to be challenged. After seizing the biggest win of his life on Sunday, Young summarized it nicely.
Cam Young’s Players Championship moment was perfectly awkward
By:
James Colgan
“The way everything is raised, you just know all eyes are right there on you,” Young said. “There’s nowhere to hide, and I feel like I stepped up really well and hit a bunch of good shots those last couple holes, so I’m very proud of that.”
After a week on the ground at Sawgrass, it seems only fitting to start today’s stock report with the character who stared fear in the face and won: Young.
Players Championship 2026 stock report
Cam Young: Stock UP
It always seemed likely that Cam Young would break through on a stage like the Players Championship. Young’s general competitive disposition received a major shot in the arm with a dominant performance at the Ryder Cup in September, and players tend to carry their form in the Cup in the years that follow. Scottie Scheffler turned an impressive Ryder Cup in 2021 into four years as the best golfer on the planet; Max Homa turned an impressive Ryder Cup in ’23 into a T2 at the Masters the following April; Justin Rose turned his performances in ’23 and ’25 into three extra years at the pinnacle of the sport in the twilight of his career; and now Cameron Young joins the club with a career-defining win at the Players arriving just months after a fan-endearing week at Bethpage.
Collin Morikawa: Stock DOWN
It’s hard to get knocked for WDing on your second hole of the golf tournament. But the nature of Morikawa’s WD and the fact he intimated it’d happened before stick out as red flags for me, even if the injury itself isn’t more serious than a pulled muscle. Here’s hoping for a speedy recovery.
Ludvig Aberg: Stock UP
This might sound counterintuitive considering the way Aberg bombed out of contention on Sunday after entering the day with a three-shot lead, but I actually thought Ludvig’s gameplan was commendable. He played aggressively. He attacked flags. He stayed on the offensive. In the end, his head wasn’t quite there, and his performance suffered. It happens. Nobody’s writing the final script on Aberg’s career after that performance on Sunday, and I’d even go as far as to argue that his plainspokenness about the issues he ran into could serve to help him overcome them in the near future.
For now, the stock stays up. But it’s probably better if this doesn’t become a theme.
Scottie Scheffler: HOLD
Nothing I saw last week made me believe that the World No. 1’s recent blip is anything more than a blip. In fact, if I were betting on the most likely outcome of the next six weeks of my life, it would include spotting Scheffler ducking his way into Butler Cabin on Sunday evening in a few weeks as the newest Masters winner.
BUT … Scheffler looks as frustrated with his own golf game as we’ve seen him in quite a while. It’s almost as if his own standards rose with all of ours. I thought it was interesting hearing Justin Thomas’ assessment of Scheffler’s driver and iron woes at Sawgrass.
“No, you can just tell [something is off],” Thomas said. “It’s just timing and trying to match it up.”
Of course, timing is a pretty big deal for a swing as fluid and athletic as Scheffler’s — but Thomas didn’t seem too worried about him figuring it out.
“He’s still hitting shots that not many people on planet earth can hit in the same rounds,” Thomas said. “It’s just golf. He’s been hitting it pretty much where he wants within like a blanket size for what seems like two or three years. He’s still had a pretty damned good year. I know I’d trade with him.”
If Thomas isn’t worried about it, then neither am I.
Matt Fitzpatrick: Stock UP
I’d buy all the Matt Fitzpatrick stock I can get my hands on right now — not just because of the way he snuck into contention at the Players and came within an inch of his life of winning the tournament, but also because of his candor in speaking with the press about the … unsavory fan attitudes as the tournament neared its conclusion.
I don’t think the fans decided the tournament. And I certainly don’t think they rattled Fitz. But I respect the hell out of a golfer who’s willing to shoot straight after coming up short in the heat of battle. It reflects something about his competitive makeup — perhaps an acknowledgment that tournaments are won and lost on very small margins and occasionally the result of randomness — that will serve him well the next time he winds up in this spot.
Justin Thomas: Stock UP
Speaking of Thomas, the Players was a reminder of how much fun golf is when he’s in contention. Thomas is one of the more candid voices on Tour, and his game is an old-school blend of shotmaking and gumption. After surgery cost him the better part of six months, he’s going to need some time to get his groove back. But once he stops getting “spacey” on the course? Well, the Tour will be glad to have him.
Jordan Spieth: STAY AWAY
As your Certified Golfing Analyst (CGA), it’s my fiduciary duty to shoot straight — and here is me shooting straight: I’m not sure I can advise you to buy any stock in Jordan Spieth right now … because I’m not sure I understand what’s going on with him myself. On Friday afternoon, Spieth looked like a vision of old, talking about “weird golf” and playing miraculous recovery shots from inside trees and generally displaying the kind of topsy-turvy golf that makes his game thrilling and totally addicting. After it was done, Spieth even admitted to the press that he’s “really, really close” to the kind of golf he’s spent the last decade trying to rediscover. For a second, I believed it! But then I saw him battling to stay under par on Sunday after a Saturday 76 that punted him out of the tournament, and I wondered if those visions were a mirage.
If you have conviction about which way this is headed, you’re probably wrong. Buy or sell at your own risk!
Xander Schauffele: BUY
Thank god PGA Tour events are 72 holes, because if the last we’d seen of Schauffele was his disastrous third round at TPC Sawgrass, we might be legitimately concerned for the rest of his season. Thankfully, Schauffele had Sunday to set the record straight — and that’s just what he did, shooting three under with birdies on each of the last three holes to claim the clubhouse lead and eventually a solo third finish.
One of the things I admire about Schauffele is his mental toughness. He never seems to get too high or too low, even when the wheels are falling off or a major championship is within his grasp. He needed all of those competitive juices on Sunday at Sawgrass, and it was enough to set the arrow pointing up heading to Augusta.
Brooks Koepka: Stock UP
The winner of the quietest top-15 at Sawgrass by a very wide margin? Brooks Koepka, who shot 6 under for the week and finished T13. Perhaps most impressive about Koepka’s performance was his effort on the 17th, where he landed the ball on the green on all four tournament days for the first time in his career.
I get that a T13 without really making any noise isn’t anything to get overly excited about … but if he’s in the hunt on Sunday in Augusta in a few weeks, something tells me we’ll be viewing this outcome differently.
