Cameron Young falls short at Masters after early lead slips away

Cameron Young had Augusta National’s hardest job in front of him and still saw the Green Jacket slip away in the span of three holes. After briefly building a two-stroke lead in the final round, Young gave back the margin with bogeys on Nos. 6, 7 and 9, the kind of midround stumble that turns Sunday pressure into a sprint no one wants to run.

Young entered the last round tied for the lead with Rory McIlroy at 11-under 205 after a 7-under 65 on Saturday, a round that erased the eight-shot gap he faced earlier in the week and put him in the final pairing. For a player who opened the tournament with a 73, including a 40 on the front nine, the rise was dramatic. So was the collapse. Young finished the day with a 73 of his own and ended tied for third at 10-under, two shots behind McIlroy.

That gap mattered because McIlroy did not budge. He closed with his second consecutive green jacket and became only the fourth player in Masters history to win back-to-back titles, leaving Young to measure how thin the line is between a charge and a finish at Augusta. Young’s Sunday was not undone by one bad swing. It was undone by a sequence: a lead, then lost rhythm, then three bogeys in six holes that forced him to play from behind on a course that punishes hesitation.

The final round also came with added noise. A rules-violation accusation against Young sharpened attention on his round and added another layer to a day that was already tight at the top. Even so, the late fade remained the central story. Young steadied himself enough to post a 73, but the damage had already been done in the middle of the round, where contenders at Augusta so often discover that par is not enough once momentum turns.

The result did not erase what Young had done over the first three days. Less than a month after winning the Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass on March 15, he came to Augusta trying to become the third consecutive Players winner to also capture the Masters. Instead, he left with another marker of how quickly Sunday can punish a contender. At Augusta National, the margin for error is tiny, and Young’s third-round surge showed the ceiling is high. His Sunday showed how fast it can disappear.