THE MODERATOR: We would like to welcome the winner of the 2026 Cadillac Championship Cameron Young to the interview room. Cameron, you just captured your third PGA TOUR victory and second this season. How does it feel?
CAMERON YOUNG: It feels good. Yeah, I went quite a number of starts without getting my first win, and now feel very, very blessed to have had a few now recently.
THE MODERATOR: Had quite a commanding win. Came in with a six-shot lead. How was it during the final round with the lead.
CAMERON YOUNG: Winning is really hard. It's not, at no point did it feel easy, did it feel like the tournament was over. Even the last couple holes there's a lot that can happen and you're never quite sure what the guys in front of you are going to do, the other guys in your group. So it was really just a matter of keeping my head down and trying to play good golf all the way through to the finish.
THE MODERATOR: What's it like seeing that final putt with your family is there green side and running around trophy ceremony?
CAMERON YOUNG: Yeah, it's pretty cool. They weren't there for my first win at Wyndham, but fortunately they were at THE PLAYERS and then came down today later in the day. I had kind of told my wife, maybe it's not the best idea to stick the kids in the car for two hours here and two hours back with all the security with the President here and everything, but, you know, really grateful that they did come down. I was really happy to see 'em at the end of a day like that.
THE MODERATOR: With that we'll open it up for questions.
Q. You mentioned it's a bit of an unusual day here, obviously. You don't always win a tournament with the President of the United States in attendance. What is that like to get the thumbs up and the handshake and something that most people never get a chance to experience?
CAMERON YOUNG: Yeah, it's very unique. He's nothing if not a very, very interesting man. He's very powerful, and it's an honor to get to play in front of him. Hugely grateful to him and his family and his organization that has these beautiful properties and allows us to come and play great golf tournaments on them. This is a special place and great championship golf course, I'm thankful to have it back in the schedule.
Q. Talk about what has changed in your game over the last I guess six months or so since that first win. It just seems to have opened something up for you.
CAMERON YOUNG: Yeah, it certainly did. Once you've done it once, I think it is easier to do it again. But at the same time the golf hasn't changed tremendously. I think I keep just slowly improving in I think all really the different areas of the game. I think I'm slightly better just everywhere than I was a year ago. That's the goal, just keep incrementally getting a little bit better. When you do that I think the good weeks come together and they look more like this as opposed to finishing second, third, fifth, where you had a chance to win and didn't. So it's just very, very small progress and it's showing up in the results.
Q. Curious, what was the conversation like with the President? I know it was short, but.
CAMERON YOUNG: Yeah, no, he was just very complimentary, the way that he, you know I've been fortunate to meet him before and that's especially with us golfers it's something he loves and I think appreciates how good everybody is on the PGA TOUR. So really just hugely complementary and I of course thanked him for hosting us and that was about it.
Q. Curious, the situation with the penalty stroke on 1. Seems like 1 kind of got you each day this weekend, but does that kind of make you realize that, no, I really just need to focus on what's ahead of me for the next 17 holes.
CAMERON YOUNG: Yeah, certainly. That was already my mindset, but it's a really good reminder. I think I said it after Friday, the leads can go away really quick around here. I had a really good taste that have yesterday. Nick came out and birdied 1 and 3 and I bogeyed No. 1 and all of a sudden I went from feeling like I had a big lead to two shots, which is one bad swing out here. I had a really good reminder of that on Saturday, and yeah, I think if anything that helped more than anything just to understand, hey, this is, we're going from the very beginning. There's no reason to be protecting anything because with the conditions the way they were either the guys in the final group or one of the groups just ahead could have shot 8-, 9-under par. So yes, two very unfortunate, but at the same time another really stark reminder of the task at hand.
Q. You said this is a special place you're glad it's back on tour. Can you talk a little bit about what makes it special and if there's anything different about this course compared to other ones.
CAMERON YOUNG: Yeah, it's just undeniably a big, difficult championship golf course. That's I think what a lot of us like out here on tour. For me personally I prefer a difficult golf course to an easier one, I think. Just that's the kind of golf I like. To have another place like that on the schedule, we got a pretty easy day here today, but if you get a few days out here where it blows all day as opposed to just in the afternoon, the scoring could be radically different. I just, I like having one more place on the schedule that's more that style of golf.
Q. You're on a really good roll, we talked a little bit about it yesterday, but how does this set you up now with the next major just two weeks ahead, and coming so close at the Masters?
CAMERON YOUNG: Yeah, I think it sets me up well. I've been playing great, and the goal is just to put myself in a position to win as much as I can. There's going to be days where it's your day and you have a great Sunday and give yourself a chance. There's going to be days where you hang around and something strange happens and you win. To me, the biggest thing right now is just to continue to put myself in position where those things can happen. So, you know, another kind of checkmark in that book this week. Obviously it's a better position than you can really ever hope for, but yeah, just happy to have put myself around the lead again and very thankful to have finished it off.
Q. How fine is that line between having it your day, your weekend, as opposed to falling just a stroke short or a couple strokes short?
CAMERON YOUNG: Yeah, it can be really small. Golf, they say it's a game of inches and it certainly is. I mean, there's little things that happen throughout the course of four days where a couple inches left or right or farther and things can be very different. So there's very small difference between a good shot that gets a bad bounce and a good shot that gets a good bounce. And it can change the tone of the day entirely. Yeah, I mean, when things are going poorly it's really hard to say that, that it's that close, but it is. There's just little things that happen that either keep you going or kind of halt your momentum. And I had a week where just things kept going the right way. Yesterday off 10, hitting a palm tree on one bounce where my ball's going in the woods, and instead of making probably a 6, we get out of there with a pretty good putt for birdie. So there's things like that that happened throughout the tournament and you need some of that to win by six out here. I mean, it's a tough task to win a golf tournament, never mind by a few. That's not going to happen without a few things going your way.
Q. Did this, given the atmosphere with the President, with security, feel like a typical Sunday round or once you got out?
CAMERON YOUNG: Not at all. No. Yeah, I mean, once you get out there much more so then you're out doing your job. But everything that leads up to that, you know, the place is obviously crawling in Secret Service and security and police, and it has a definitely a different feel. I came out to go down to the side door where we've been coming in the clubhouse all week and kind of had two guys step together and say, hey, we're not letting anybody through this way right now. So I was just walking in towards the locker room toward dining and had to turn around and walked all the way around the clubhouse to get back to that door. So there's little things like that that's obviously different with the President here, and it changed the rhythm of the day a little bit to start, but it was already so thrown off by the delays that, you know, it didn't matter too much.
Q. Nine of the last 10 winners on tour have come from the area where you live. So you guys see each other a lot. How does it help your game, number one with the facilities there and number two like the iron sharpens iron type theory, playing against them and practicing with all these other players like you?
CAMERON YOUNG: Yeah, it is a great place to live, like you said, there are a bunch of really good facilities the weather there is great. Then it is a bonus to have other guys around there. Any given day you could call a number of the top-10 players in the world, top-20 players in the world and get a pretty good game together. It's fun. I've played a little bit more kind of in that group over the last year and I've really enjoyed it. I think it's good prep when you get, you know, a stretch of two weeks off, it's really good the end of that stretch to go play a couple times. I've really enjoyed it, getting to know some of those guys a little better. So it's certainly a great place to live and that's one of the many great things about living there.
Q. How do you think you're going to celebrate this win and just the trophy, do you have a trophy case back home, where is it going to go?
CAMERON YOUNG: I don't have one. Someone asked me that after THE PLAYERS and I said, I'm going to probably drive home. This time I'm going to be in a separate car probably from my kids, but, yeah, not a whole lot of celebrating. We'll go on tonight, I think it will be, you know, kind of all hands on deck to get us out of here and drive back home. Then I'll probably go up to Charlotte on Tuesday. So there's not much turnaround. This is a big win for me and a great achievement, but realistically tomorrow is back to work and that's just kind of how it goes. It's non-stop.
THE MODERATOR: At PLAYERS you shared with Kyle that you guys started at Truist championship. Coming up on a year now, what has that partnership meant being a year on the bag?
CAMERON YOUNG: Yeah, it's been great. He continues to improve. I think I'm continuing to improve. So, you know, over time our communication gets clearer, our roles become clearer. He's done a great job. This is the last week that he is seeing a golf course for the first time. So next week at the Truist, at Quail Hollow, he saw it for the PGA last year, so it's been a lot of work for him, and I'm sure he'll continue to do the same thing, but it should get a little easier for him, just having one trip around each place in the bank. So it's been a great partnership and really happy to do it alongside of him. You know, very proud of the job he's done. He's done great job, and he works really, really hard, so I'm grateful to him for that.
THE MODERATOR: Perfect. That's all the questions we have. Cameron, again, congratulations.
CAMERON YOUNG: Thank you. Appreciate it.
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