Scottie Scheffler of 2023? Why Cameron Young is poised to be the breakout superstar of the PGA Tour

At this time last year, Scottie Scheffler had never won a PGA Tour event, was outside the top 10 of the Official World Golf Rankings, wasn’t in Hawaii to attend the Tournament of Champions and had only earned $7.5 million. The current? He’s a four-time winner, the reigning Masters champion, has the second-shortest odds of anyone to win the 2023 Champions League and has tripled his earnings over the course of his career. His career grew to just over $22 million. Oh, and if he finishes near the top in this week’s event, he’ll be back at world No 1 in his 31st week.

Needless to say, things have changed.

However, it raises the question of who we are looking at right now. More specifically: Who is the Scottie Scheffler of 2023? Players will be sitting here this time next year, perhaps not with the genuine people Scheffler has assembled in 2022, but with a much more complete resume than it does now and a name much more familiar in golf households than it is at present.

There are perhaps several contenders to fill the role in 2023, but none as clear-cut as the golfer who has mostly matched Scheffler’s statistical profile, having nearly won multiple titles. big in 2022 and is about to attend Team America’s first event like Scheffler a year ago.

The most likely candidate to recreate Scottie Scheffler 2022 in 2023 is of course Cam Young.

Young is yet to win the PGA Tour, but he’s an elite ball hunter (ranked 13th in the last 12 months) and he’s contested a lot. Particularly in 2022, he finished second or third in the following content.

• Open Championship
• Invitation Genesis
• Classic Rocket Mortgage
• Wells Fargo Championship
• PGA . Championship
• red blood cell heritage

This is easy to say now, but if, say, 10 strokes go differently, then we’re talking about Scottie Scheffler’s 2022 Cam Young in 2022 and not in 2023.

Young also fits the modern stereotype. He’s very long on tee — statistician Joseph LaMagna called him the best driver in the world — and good enough in other places to be extremely dangerous. His dribbling is also very good, in that he doesn’t often finish T11. In 25 appearances last season, he was in the top three seven times and fell seven times.

It was a perfect ratio and it brought Data Golf to the following conclusion: which it featured in a recent news release.

Young is one of the most active players without a PGA Tour win: our models estimate that his PGA Tour performance was good enough to expect 1.6 PGA Tour wins and 0, 4 big wins. The only non-winner with a higher value of those two metrics is Tommy Fleetwood.

In other words, Cam Young will debut in 2023.

For a better understanding, consider that out of the current top 150 players in the world, Young is the 18th best dribbler of his career. Names ahead of him include Rory McIlroy, Sergio Garcia, Justin Thomas and Dustin Johnson. They are the players who won a lots of. Young played too few innings compared to the rest (e.g. Young played 87 rounds of ShotLink measured against Xander Schauffele’s 405) so visualizing his winning totals would catch everyone else’s. easier than picturing him collapsing aliens when it comes to his impressive numbers.

It’s not something that comes from statistical certainty — not anything really in golf — but Young’s skill set hasn’t disappeared. Great short games, great shots, they come and go. Pop and then they disappear. Drive elite cars, become the top five (perhaps top three) racer in the world? That’s a sticky statistic.

Young also seems to want the ball. He hit his lost shot of the year in 2022 when he hit a second shot on the 72nd hole at St. Andrews in the Open Championship. It was sandwiched between Cam Smith’s win and McIlroy’s defeat, but when he had to have two goals, he stepped up and did it right when he had to. He spoke after that round about how he was still learning how to win at the highest level and his Open success was part of that.

“I think I was consistent with my plan and the good execution of what got me there,” Young said. “And it’s not like I didn’t make it to the PGA Championship, but I don’t know if I’d let it come to me as much as I do today. I tried as hard as I could — see [Cam Smith] Getting a million birdies in a row is in one sense good because it motivates you, and in another sense it’s hard to watch because you see him make his shots, knowing he’s about to hit the ball. defeat you.

“But, yeah, I think I’ve been a little more patient today and obviously I was rewarded on the 18th, but just a little short.”

Coming up is a theme for Young in 2022, which is no different from Scheffler’s 2021. Scheffler finished in the top eight seven multiple times — including three of the major championships — in 2021 without winning an event. He has the highest expected win rate in 2021 (1.27 wins) of anyone who hasn’t won a PGA Tour event. Young won that honor in 2022 at a rate of 1.20 (and 0.38 for majors, which is extremely high).

Add it all up, and Young is the obvious choice to have a year like Scheffler in 2023. He’s not mentioned as he should be — the same was true of Scheffler last year — but after he was successful, two or even three major PGA Tour championships. All of that will change. Just like it did with the guy he was after.