Cameron Young walked off the 8th green after tapping in for par, ready to pencil a birdie on his playing partner’s scorecard. Scottie Scheffler faced just outside 3 feet to join Young at 4 under, but instead, the world No. 1 brushed his attempt on by and only then did the two start to go in opposite directions.
Young kept on adding circles to his own scorecard and signed for an opening bogey-free 8-under 64 at Trump National Doral to command the first-round lead. Meanwhile, Scheffler struggled the rest of the way en route to a 71, seven strokes worse than the man with whom he shared a tee time on Thursday.
“I always feel like it’s possible. If you had asked me to guess, I probably wouldn’t have guessed 64,” said Young of his low score. “But that’s not really what I was concerned about, to be honest. It’s a long three weeks, and I’m going to have some good days and some bad ones. So it was just more about getting out here today and trying to go through what we do and see what I get. Because that’s how I have to approach some of these longer stretches.”
Young leads by one shot entering Friday’s second round as Jordan Spieth and Alex Smalley both took advantage of a Blue Monster that was more friendly than scary and yielded an under-par scoring average in Round 1. Lack of wind until the late stages of the first round, along with receptive greens, created the opportunity for low scores as players faced this fearsome course in a brave manner.
Not all were as lucky as Young, Spieth and company, though. Genesis Invitational winner Jacob Bridgeman fell to the bottom of the leaderboard with a first-round 79 as major champions Collin Morikawa, Justin Rose, Adam Scott and Jason Day all came in over par.
“[The wind] was kind of moving around. It started kind of west when we started, and now, it’s southeast. So had to try to pay attention to what it was doing and commit to what it was doing,” Spieth said. “Because although the greens are big, the areas that the pins are at are super small.
“So, if you had a good number, it was attack, and if you didn’t, it was play it to 20 feet and go from there. I knocked a couple putts in from the fringe, which is a bonus, and the rest of the round I just played really the right way. So kept the ball in front of me, which will be key the next three days.”
Leader
1. Cameron Young (-8): Young’s first round featured eight birdies and 10 pars with his par breakers coming from either tap-in range or long distance. The Players Championship winner’s wedge play was superb in his opening salvo as he flicked darts into the pins at Nos. 2, 5 and 16. His other birdies came courtesy of some fortunate putting via a make from 45 feet on the par-4 3rd and connections from off the green on Nos. 7 and 15.
Making the performance even more impressive was that Young did so without driving the ball to his standards. Hitting only half the fairways and battling a violent left miss at times, he was able to overcome this and put together the round of the day. If he tightens that club up a smidge and maintains this sharpness with his wedges, Young may not yield much to his chasers.
“It’s pretty much right in front of you for the most part,” Young said. “Most of the tee shots are pretty apparent, which is what good courses give you. I think it doesn’t try to hide anything. So learning the course wasn’t a huge deal, I wouldn’t say. Yeah, I drove it OK today; it should suit me really well, and thankfully, [I] had a really good day around the greens. I made a couple from the fringe and putted really well.”
Contenders
T2. Jordan Spieth, Alex Smalley (-7)
4. Nick Taylor (-6)
5. Nico Echavarria (-5)
T6. Andrew Putnam, Brian Harman, Gary Woodland (-4)
Well, would you look at that? Spieth sizzled on Thursday thanks to some of his usual antics — chipping in for eagle on the par-5 8th would fall under this category — but also some other positive signs in his game. The three-time major champion took care of the difficult quartet of par 3s at Doral, playing them in 2 under and without any stress to speak of. There were a few loose swings, but all in all, it was one of the best performances from Spieth in a long time.
While working on his game is one of the reasons for the performance, what he was gaming was just as important, according to Spieth. The 13-time PGA Tour winner mentioned that he switched to the Pro V1-X left dash. He noted that his spin rates have increased and that he was looking for a lower-spin ball, but that was not all, as Spieth put some new lumber in the bag in the form of a new driver and a 3 wood. On Thursday, it looked like the right call.
“I felt like I’ve had some tournaments this year where I’ve gotten off to these nice starts early in the first round, front nine, and then we play difficult golf courses or I just hadn’t really held it, so I remember I went to Michael during the day today and just said, ‘Let’s set a new goal; let’s pretend we’re starting over just to stay aggressive,’ just to kind of seeing holes to make birdies versus seeing holes for how hard they are, if that makes sense,” Spieth said.
“So it was a good strategy. I don’t foresee 7 under every day, but when the wind was down to start, it was a good time to try to take advantage. And the greens were soft enough and not quite fast enough to where if you were controlling the ball off the tee, you were going to get some looks.”
Rose’s race begins with a crash
Equipment changes always spark conversation, but especially when the change is to a … car manufacturer. Rose made the move to new McLaren irons ahead of this week’s tournament, and he was met with a rude opening-round performance. His first hole saw him miss the green with a wedge in hand, blade his fourth into the penalty area and do well to walk off the par 5 dropping a pair.
The Englishman steadied the ship over the next handful of holes, but he found water again on the par-5 8th, leading to another double bogey. He never fully recovered. In total, he lost strokes on 13 of his 18 approach shots in what was one of his ball-striking days of 2026.
2026 Cadillac Championship updated odds, picks
Odds via DraftKings Sportsbook
- Cameron Young: +160
- Jordan Spieth: 6-1
- Scottie Scheffler: 8-1
- Alex Smalley: 10-1
- Nick Taylor: 20-1
- Gary Woodland: 28-1
Young could take a strange hold on this tournament on Friday if he drives it better and takes care of the par 5s, but I’d lean on Scheffler having that late Friday surge instead. The world No. 1 turned in 3 under, even with a couple of missed opportunities, and then the wheels fell off. He played the par 5s in 1 over, left a number of chances out there and is playing much better than his 1-under round. At nearly three times his pre-tournament price, let’s roll the dice.