After six Players Championships and a number of other Sunday afternoons at golf’s biggest events, I’ve developed a completely unscientific theory about TPC Sawgrass Island Green’s famous 17th.
If you’re hunting late on Sunday and hunting for the side of the Sunday rolled pin placement flag, good things happen.
Cameron Young’s performance Throughout the famous closing stages at the Players Championship on Sunday he deserves praise – he made pars on 16 while holed up in a bunker from 50 yards and on 18 after hitting the longest drive in the history of that hole – but it was his shot on the 17th that I thought revealed the most about him. With Young’s tournament hopes hanging on a birdie on the hole, he went to the scariest shot at Sawgrass and delivered a bogey right at the flag stick. He was rewarded with a 10-footer for the birdie putt, sending the crowd into a frenzy and tilting the balance of the tournament in his favor.
Trying my theory around 17 has less to do with strategy than gumption, and can be distilled into the following sentence: You can’t be bothered playing TPC Sawgrass smart. If you want to win on Sunday, you need: 1. birds 2. risk tolerance and 3. guts. The type of players who thrive in that type of environment are those who see the course and the tournament not as something to be feared, but as something to be challenged. After capturing the biggest win of his life on Sunday, Young summed it up nicely.
“The way everything is set up, you just know all eyes are 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 of holes, so I’m really proud of that.”
After a week on the field at Sawgrass, it seems fitting to start today’s stock report with the guy who put fear in his face and won: Young.
Players Championship 2026 Stock Report
Cam Young: Stock UP
It always seemed possible that Cam Young would break through on a stage like The Players Championship. Young’s overall competitive mood took a big hit in the arm with a dominant Ryder Cup performance in September, and players tend to carry their Cup form in years to come. Scottie Scheffler turns 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 returned his performances in ’23 and ’25 in three additional years at the top of the sport in the twilight of his career; and now Cameron Young joins the club with a career-defining victory in the Players arriving just months after a fan-favourite week in Bethpage.
Collin Morikawa: Stocks DOWN
It’s hard to go down for WDing on your second hole of a golf tournament. But the nature of Morikawa’s WD, and the fact that he indicated it had happened before, remain red flags to me, even if the injury itself is no more serious than a pulled muscle. Here’s hoping for a speedy recovery.
Ludvig Aberg: Stock UP
This may sound counterintuitive considering the way Aberg bombed from the sequelgame on Sunday after taking a three-shot lead, but I actually thought Ludvig’s game plan was commendable. He played aggressively. He attacked the flags. He stayed on the offensive. In the end, his head wasn’t quite there and his performance suffered. HAPPENS. No one is writing the definitive script for Aberg’s career after that performance Sunday, and I’d even go so far as to argue that his openness about the issues he’s faced could serve to help him overcome them in the near future.
At the moment, the stock remains on the rise. But maybe it’s best if this doesn’t become a topic.
Scottie Scheffler: HOLD
Nothing I saw last week led me to believe that the world No. 1’s latest blow is anything more than a fluke. In fact, if I were to bet on the most likely outcome of the next six weeks of my life, it would involve seeing Scheffler walk into Butler’s booth Sunday night after a few weeks as the youngest Masters winner.
BUT … Scheffler looks as frustrated with his golf game as we’ve seen him in a long time. It’s almost like his standards rose with all of ours. I thought it was interesting to hear Justin Thomas’ assessment of Scheffler’s driver and iron issues at Sawgrass.
“No, you can just tell (something’s wrong),” Thomas said. “It’s just time and effort to adjust it.”
Of course, timing is a pretty big deal for a swing as fluid and athletic as Scheffler’s — but Thomas didn’t seem too concerned 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 in, like a blanket for two or three years. He’s still having a really good year. I know I’d trade him.”
If Thomas isn’t worried about it, then neither am I.
Matt Fitzpatrick: Stocks UP
I’d buy all the Matt Fitzpatrick stock I can find right now – not just because of the style he got into a fight at the Players and came within an inch of his life to win the tournament, but also because of his candor in speaking to the press about the … unpleasant attitudes of the fans as the tournament drew to a close.
I don’t think the fans decided the tournament. And me of course don’t think they shocked Fitz. But I have a hell of a lot of respect for a golfer who is willing to putt right after coming up short in the heat of battle. It reflects something about his competitive makeup – perhaps an acceptance that tournaments are won and lost by very small margins and occasionally the result of chance – that will serve him well the next time he ends up in this country.
Justin Thomas: Stock UP
Speaking for Thomas, The Players was a reminder of how much fun golf is when he’s competing. Thomas is one of the most outspoken voices on Tour, and his game is an old-school mix of gunplay and guts. After the surgery cost him more than six months, he will need some time to get back into the groove. But once he stops taking “space” on the course? Well, the Tour will be happy to have him.
Jordan Spieth: STAY AWAY
As your Certified Golf Analyst (CGA), it’s my faithful duty to shoot straight – and here I am 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. Friday afternoon, Spieth looked like an old visiontalking about “freak golf” and playing wonderful recovery shots from inside the trees and generally displaying the kind of murky golf that makes his game thrilling and utterly addictive. After it was done, Spieth even admitted to the press that he is “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 watched him struggle to stay even on Sunday after a Saturday 76 that knocked him out of the tournament, and I wondered if those visions were a mirage.
whether you you have a belief in which direction this is going, you are probably wrong. Buy or sell at your own risk!
Xander Schauffele: BUY
Thank goodness PGA Tour events are 72 holes, because if the last we’d seen of Schauffele was his disastrous third round at TPC Sawgrass, we could legitimately worry about the rest of his season. Thankfully, Schauffele had Sunday to set the record straight – and that’s exactly what he did, shooting three under with birdies on each of the last three holes to take the clubhouse lead and eventually a sole third finish.
One of the things I admire about Schauffele is his mental toughness. He never seems to be too high or too low, even when the wheels are falling off or a major championship is in his grasp. He needed all those competitive juices Sunday at Sawgrass, and it was enough to put the arrow pointing up to Augusta.
Brooks Koepka: Stock UP
The quietest top-15 winner at Sawgrass by a 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 days of the tournament for the first time in his career.
I understand that a T13 without really making a splash isn’t something to get too excited about… but if he’s in the hunt on Sunday at Augusta in a few weeks, something tells me we’ll see this result differently.
;)
