How Cameron Young Won the 2025 Wyndham Championship

Six strokes clear at 22 under par, and mostly a putting story. That is Cameron Young's 2025 Wyndham Championship at Sedgefield Country Club, and before anything else, a thank-you to Data Golf, whose round-level strokes-gained numbers make a piece like this possible.

The record says this was primarily a putting win, with a genuinely good driving week standing right behind it. Young gained 10.3 strokes on the field with the putter, 1st of 75, 54% of his advantage, where the season-winner average was 35%. What the fuller review adds is the second half of the story: he also ranked 2nd of 75 off the tee, 24% of his advantage against a 14% average. Call it a putting win with a strong driving week riding along, not a one-club story.

How the win was built

Scoring conversion: 27 birdies or better, 5 bogeys against a field average of 9.4, 0 double bogeys or worse, over 72 holes. Final round 68, +1.3 strokes against the field that day. Led after 54 holes.

*Average share across the 31 earlier 2025 winners with a strokes-gained record. Shares count only the categories where the winner beat the field, so a category where he lost strokes reads 0%, and rounding can leave the four shares a point short of or above 100. Strokes gained: Data Golf. The field is the 75 players who completed all four rounds.

Begin with the putter, because this week it did most of the work. Young gained 10.3 strokes on the field on the greens, 1st of 75, 54% of his total advantage against a 35% season-winner average. That is the second-highest putting total by any winner in the database this season, trailing only J.J. Spaun's 10.52 at the U.S. Open. The next-best week below Young's belongs to Min Woo Lee, at 8.71.

Off the tee, Young was 4.6 strokes better than the field, 2nd of 75, 24% of his advantage, where the season-winner average was 14%, not far off double the usual share. Put the putter and the driver together and most of his week's advantage had already arrived before he faced a testing approach shot.

Approach was ordinary for a winner: 3.1 strokes better than the field, 22nd of 75, 16% of his advantage, where the season-winner average was 37%. Most 2025 winners lean on the irons for more than a third of their week; Young leaned on them for about a sixth.

Around the green, 1.2 strokes better than the field, 28th of 75, 6% of his advantage against a typical 13%. A driving week this strong likely left him little trouble to escape, so the short game had a quiet week too.

Then the scorecard. Young made 27 birdies or better in four rounds, better than one in every three holes played, against 5 bogeys and a field average of 9.4, and 0 doubles or worse. He led after 54 holes and closed with a final round of 68, 1.3 strokes better than the field that day. Add it up and the scorecard checks out exactly against the 22-under total on the leaderboard.

The winning formula

Putting-Fueled Win, the 12th of the 2025 season. The rule: putting supplied at least 40% of the winner's advantage over the field. This week: putting drove 54% of the advantage.

Winning-formula ledger for 2025 through this event: Putting-Fueled Win 12, Ball-Striking Blueprint 9, Final-Round Takeover 6, Mistake-Free Win 5, Unclassified 2, Driving Domination 1, Short-Game Survival 1.

The label here is Putting-Fueled Win, the 12th of the 2025 season, earned because putting supplied more than 40% of the winner's advantage over the field. Young's 54% clears that bar comfortably, and putting was also the week's largest category.

What sets this one apart from the 11 Putting-Fueled winners before him is not the share on the greens: Sepp Straka took 66% of his advantage from the putter at the Truist, and J.J. Spaun took 64% at the U.S. Open, both ahead of Young's 54%. What sets him apart is the margin and the driving. The 11 prior Putting-Fueled winners won by between 0 and 4 strokes; Young's 6-stroke margin is the largest in that group, and his 4.6 off the tee is the highest driving total of any Putting-Fueled winner this season, ahead of Chris Gotterup's 4.4 at the Scottish Open. Great putting gets a player into that column. A big driving week on top of it got him a wider margin than anyone else in it.

What this week added to the season

Across the 35 2025 winners before this one (31 with a strokes-gained record; the averages use those 31): average winning margin 1.8 strokes, average bogeys 6.4, average shares of advantage off the tee 14%, approach 37%, around the green 13%, putting 35%. This winner: margin 6, bogeys 5.

Set against the season, the margin is the headline. The average 2025 winner through this event won by 1.8 strokes; Young won by 6, more than 3.3 times that. Only two wins all season were bigger: Scottie Scheffler's 8-stroke win at the CJ Cup Byron Nelson and Thomas Detry's 7-stroke win at the WM Phoenix Open. He made 5 bogeys against a season-winner average of 6.4 and a field average of 9.4, and 0 doubles, though zero doubles was already common this season: 25 of the 35 winners before him also finished without one.

In the database, Young has two other wins. At the 2026 Players Championship he won by 1 in a Final-Round Takeover, with approach supplying 47% of the advantage. At the 2026 Cadillac Championship he won again by 6 in another Putting-Fueled Win, putting supplying 49%. Sedgefield repeated the pattern too: the 2026 Wyndham Championship also went to a Putting-Fueled Win, Michael Brennan winning by 3 with 47% from the greens. Three putting-heavy results from one player and one course is a pattern worth watching, not a rule.

The Data Action angle

The result line reads 22 under and 6 clear. What the numbers add is which two clubs built that gap. Off the tee, Young ranked 2nd of 75. On the greens, he ranked 1st of 75, the second-highest putting total by any winner in the database this season. Everything else was ordinary: 22nd of 75 with the irons, 28th of 75 around the green.

That is also the honest limit of what this record can say. Putting produced 54% of Young's measured advantage, and he led the field in putting while ranking second off the tee. What the numbers cannot say is that putting is why he won, because all four of his categories were positive that week, and once every category adds rather than subtracts, no single one can be isolated as the cause of a 6-stroke margin. The most honest sentence the data allows is a distribution, not a verdict: more than half from the greens, about a quarter from the tee, the rest ordinary.

The amateur translation

What did the professional actually do this week? He drove it well enough to rank 2nd in a 75-man field, then putted well enough to rank 1st, with an approach game and a short game that were nothing special. Neither number was a hot streak. Both came from getting the ball into a stress-free spot as often as possible, off the tee and again on the green.

The underlying scoring principle: the first stroke's job is to make the next one boring. A drive in the fairway makes the approach easier. A first putt that finishes close makes the second putt automatic.

What does that look like at your level? If you are a 5 handicap, your version of this week is the lag putt: from well outside 20 feet, a stress-free two-putt is the goal, and a make is a bonus. If you are a 15, the leak is usually speed, not line. First putts that finish 6 feet away instead of 2 turn a two-putt into a three-putt, so practice speed before you practice reading break. If you are a 25, forget the hole entirely on anything longer than 15 feet. Picture a 3-foot circle around the cup and try to stop the ball inside it. That is a win, every time.

Homework, one item. For three rounds, on every first putt, write down the distance and whether it finished inside 3 feet. Do not track makes, track the ones that ended up boring. That idea, noticing your own pattern before anyone teaches it to you, is Fred Shoemaker's, not mine, and feel misleads on the greens more than almost anywhere in golf. Data Action Golf splits your three-putts by first-putt distance, so you can see whether your leak is the long lag or the short pressure putt, and Putting IQ teaches the physics underneath the read.

Three findings

1. Putting built the gap. Young led the field with the flat stick, 10.3 strokes better than the field, the second-highest putting total by any winner in the database this season, behind only J.J. Spaun's 10.52 at the U.S. Open.
2. Mistake avoidance was the quiet half. 5 bogeys against a field average of 9.4, and 0 doubles across 72 holes. Zero doubles was common this season, so the real gap was in bogeys avoided, not disasters dodged.
3. He led after 54 holes and closed with a 68. That final round gained 1.3 strokes on the field, protecting a lead that had already been built by the putter and the driver over the first three days.

The week's lesson: a stress-free two-putt, over and over, for 72 holes.

How to read these numbers

Strokes gained figures are Data Golf's, summed over the winner's four rounds and stated against the field's average for each round, so a positive number is strokes better than the field. Field ranks compare the 75 players who completed all four rounds. "Share of advantage" is the Data Action Golf reading: a category's strokes gained as a percentage of the winner's total across the categories where he beat the field. The 2025 winner average share is the mean of that figure across the season's earlier winners with a strokes-gained record, so it moves as the season goes on. The winning-formula label is assigned by fixed rules checked in a set order; the first rule that fits wins, and the labels describe how one week's advantage was distributed, nothing more. These numbers describe this tournament. They do not predict the next one. Full method: how Data Action Golf reads a winner and what strokes gained measures.