Cameron Young trails Scottie Scheffler by 966 points in the FedExCup standings as he heads into Thursday’s Wyndham Championship, the last event before the points race closes out at the BMW Championship on August 23. While appearing at a press conference at Sedgefield Country Club, the defending champion made his intentions clear.

While appearing at a press conference at Sedgefield Country Club, the defending champion made his intentions clear.

“The FedExCup points race kind of ends after the BMW Championship. I’m in third right now. I have [the No. 2 spot] relatively within reach. To catch Scottie, I’d have to kind of go nuts, but that’s the goal,” Young said. “If I can put together, starting now, three really good weeks of golf, there’s always a chance. That’s the goal. And really, to accomplish it, it’s just step by step. It starts Thursday this week, just trying to put together a bunch of good golf shots and see what it adds up to.”

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Young has two wins this season: THE PLAYERS Championship in March and the Cadillac Championship in May. That momentum matters now. He also has eight top-10 finishes, so he doesn’t need to win out over the rest of the season to pass Fitzpatrick. Passing Scheffler is a different question entirely.

Young sits third with 3,157 points. Fitzpatrick is 172 ahead, a gap that got easier to close the moment Scheffler pulled out of this week’s field. Fitzpatrick is still here, though, chasing the same points at the same course. FedExCup points are handed out purely by finish, so every spot on the leaderboard this week counts twice as much for Young.

At the Wyndham, the winner takes 500 points, enough on its own to pass Fitzpatrick. Runner-up is worth 300, and it scales down from there. Beating Fitzpatrick is realistic. Catching Scheffler is a taller order: it would mean winning this week, then backing it up at the FedEx St. Jude Championship and the BMW Championship, both of which Scheffler will also play.

It’s not the only leaderboard where Scheffler’s name sits just above his. Young’s Players Championship win in March also pushed him to No. 2 in the U.S. Presidents Cup team standings, trailing only Scheffler there as well. With Medinah Country Club hosting the event in six months, closing that gap carries stakes well beyond FedExCup positioning.

This isn’t the first time this year Young has had Scheffler’s number, or the other way around. They’ve traded the FedExCup lead all season: Young passed him after tying for third at the Masters, where Scheffler was runner-up. Scheffler took it back a week later at the RBC Heritage. Young reclaimed it with his Cadillac Championship win and held on through the Truist and the PGA Championship. Scheffler regained the lead while Young sat out the CJ Cup Byron Nelson, and hasn’t given it back since.

Scheffler’s lead isn’t built on wins, either. He has just one this season, at the American Express in January, and has climbed the standings mostly on a string of runner-up and top-three finishes since. Young has two wins to Scheffler’s one and still trails him comfortably in points. The gap also matters less than it used to at East Lake. The TOUR Championship dropped its staggered start last year, so all 30 players begin even par, and whoever wins there takes the FedExCup outright. What the points race still decides is who makes that field, and how big a cut of the roughly $100 million bonus pool each player gets.

Why Playing Alongside Scottie Scheffler Has Become So Difficult

Playing alongside Scottie Scheffler has become one of the toughest assignments on the PGA Tour, according to former Tour player and CBS Sports analyst Johnson Wagner. It won’t be an issue for Young this week, since Scheffler isn’t in the field. But it’s a preview of what he’s chasing: the kind of attention that follows only the very best.

Speaking on Golf on CBS after the 3M Open, Wagner described Brian Harman’s round alongside Scheffler.

“Harman backed off multiple times,” Wagner said. “He had to back off of tee shots because of the crowd.”

The distractions weren’t limited to the tee box. Wagner said Harman also had to wait out the noise on the greens, backing off putts while the gallery around Scheffler settled down.

“It’s just like it was playing with Tiger,” Wagner said, comparing the scene to Tiger Woods at his peak.

Scheffler’s absence this week spares Young that particular headache. What it doesn’t spare him is the math. Three tournaments remain, no starting-strokes cushion waits at East Lake, and the gap is exactly what Young called it at Sedgefield: something he’d have to go nuts to close. Wyndham will answer the easier question, whether he can pass Fitzpatrick. What happens the two weeks after will answer the one he actually put out there.