No home course advantage for Wake’s Cameron Young in 63 at Sedgefield

It might be easy to assume that Wake Forest graduate Cameron Young has a home course advantage at Sedgefield Country Club for the Wyndham Championship.

Especially after watching him finish with five consecutive birdies on the front nine (his back nine) Thursday to post 7-under-par 63. And he capped the round by sinking a 20-foot chip on No. 9 from just off the right side of the green.

Not so, according to the 28-year-old native New Yorker, who spent most of his practice time at Wake at Old Town Club.

“I think it was once, it might have been twice,” Young said about how many times he made the trip to Greensboro to play the host of the Wyndham. “I remember the holes, but anytime you get a course in PGA Tour condition, you start to see things that you never noticed before.

“You could go to a lot of the places that we go to throughout the year and wonder why it’s so hard and then we show up for the week we’re there and you can tell why.”

Given a similar question a few minutes later, Young conceded that he feels a sort of comfort playing in the Triad.

“There’s more support here than I get most anywhere else,” he said. “You know, I lived 30 minutes from here for four years of my life, so it’s a place I’m comfortable with, it’s a place I really enjoyed. It’s nice to have some Wake Forest fans out there. It’s a small school, but nice to have some Wake Forest presence.

“Yeah, it’s an area of the country I like coming back to and obviously a golf course that I like playing.”

Young said he never attended the Wyndham as a spectator, explaining the tournament is played during summer vacation.

Young birdied No. 13 and 14 with 4-foot putts. His lone bogey came on a 3-putt from 29 feet at No. 1. He got it back with a 10-foot birdie putt at 3. The shortest of his birdie putts on his final five-putts was about 10 feet. He made a 25-footer at the par-3 seventh.

“frankly, the last five holes there, I hit it farther from the hole than I did pretty much the whole day,” Young said. “It’s just a matter of a couple putts going in, and then the one on the last is a bonus. It was one of my worst two or three shots of the day to miss the green right there with a wedge. I hit it really close a bunch early and didn’t make much.”

Looking for his first PGA Tour victory in his 94th event, Young is in good position at No. 33 in the FedEx Cup standings entering the tournament.