Davis Love III once singled out Cameron Young as one of golf’s highest-upside talents, praising the raw power and ball-striking that made him impossible to ignore.
Cameron Young didn’t need a trophy case full of wins for Davis Love III to see what was coming.
Back at the 2023 PGA Show, the veteran PGA Tour champion and major winner was asked about the future of professional golf and the young stars beginning to reshape the sport. Jon Rahm naturally came up. So did Young.
And Love’s enthusiasm for Young jumped off the page.
“I’m blown away with how Cam Young hits a golf ball,” Love said. “He’s unreal.”
That’s a pretty strong endorsement from someone who spent decades competing against the best players in the world.
At the time, Young was still building his résumé, but the ceiling was obvious. His combination of speed, power and elite ball-striking had already made him one of the most dangerous young players on the PGA Tour.
Love went even further.
“I think he’s got the most upside even though he’s already had some good years,” he said.
That was the fascinating part. Young wasn’t being discussed as some raw prospect trying to figure out whether he belonged.
He had already finished runner-up at The Open Championship in 2022 and tied for third at the PGA Championship, proving he could contend against elite fields on golf’s biggest stages.
Yet Love still believed there was another level waiting.
Rahm, meanwhile, was already established as a major champion after winning the 2021 U.S. Open, and Love recalled being impressed by him years earlier when they crossed paths on the PGA Tour.
“We knew he was going to be great,” Love said of Rahm.
But when the conversation shifted toward pure upside, Young was the player Love kept coming back to.
That says plenty about how impressive Young’s game looked even before the victories began stacking up.
Golf doesn’t have the same single-player stranglehold it once had during Tiger Woods’ prime.
The modern game is deeper, younger and loaded with players capable of overpowering a course on any given week.
Young fits that era perfectly.
He has the length to overwhelm par 5s, the ball speed to attack long courses and the major-championship pedigree to suggest the moment isn’t too big.
Love saw that before everyone else fully bought in. And sometimes the best scouting report is the simplest one: Watch the way the guy hits the golf ball.
