It’s ‘s world, and we’re all just living in it. He didn’t just go wire-to-wire to win the Cadillac Championship; he went wire-to-wire and won by six shots on a 7,800-yard golf course with trouble everywhere. He may not be the face of golf, but Young is certainly sliding into the role of the next great American golfer.
Speaking of the golf course, the Blue Monster at Trump National Doral did not come close to meeting even the most reasonable of expectations. The was a bore from start to finish for a handful of different reasons.
While Young was cruising to victory in Miami on Sunday, fellow American patriot Nelly Korda was doing the same at the Riviera Maya Open in Mexico. We’re getting flashbacks of her unbelievable 2024 campaign, in which it felt like she was playing an entirely different sport than everyone else.
This is Par Talk, a weekly read to get you caught up on all the happenings that took place in professional golf over the week that you need to know. You can follow Mark on X @itismarkharris and email him at mark.harris@outkick.com
Are there worse golf courses than the Blue Monster at Trump’s place on the ? Yes. Does the Blue Monster firmly rank in the bottom half of PGA Tour venues? Also, yes, absolutely yes.
Before getting into why Doral made for a complete snooze of a Cadillac Championship, we do have to recognize that where it fell on the PGA Tour calendar did it zero favors. Having it be the first of two straight signature events leading into the was always going to make it a difficult draw, especially with next week’s signature event at Quail Hollow, an admittedly better golf course with much more recent history and familiarity.
This would naturally lead us into a conversation about why signature events, especially those that do not feature a cut, need to be immediately forgotten and never spoken of again, but that’s a lengthy conversation for another day.
The TL;DR of it is that the signature events (somewhat) served their purpose while was handing out blank checks, but there are a few too many on the calendar, and can only be seen as a failure at this point.
Now onto what makes the Blue Monster a not-so-great, completely forgettable golf course on its own.
The only ‘characteristics’ of the golf course are that it is long and there is a lot of water, and that water resides in man-made hazards. Without significant wind, the Blue Monster turns into just another golf course that the best players in the world can overpower. Yes, technology is to blame for some of that, but that’s just the reality we’re living in.
In the scenario when the wind does pick up at Doral, it turns into what feels like a never-ending replay of the same hole with the same long-iron shots, with the same threat of water. Nothing, at all, stands out.
For those reading this and shouting, ‘What about the history?’ The cold-hard truth about that is that a majority of golf fans today don’t remember it or simply don’t care about it. The -Phil Mickelson duel at Doral took place 21 years ago.
The golf world only remembers the history of major championships, and it certainly forgets the moments from a golf course taken out of the Tour’s rotation that, upon its return, offers up zero engaging qualities.
It took Young 94 starts on the PGA Tour before securing his maiden victory at the 2025 Wyndham Championship, a tournament he won by six shots. Since checking that box, he further stepped into the spotlight at the 2025 Ryder Cup and has won both The Players and a signature event by six shots in less than two months in 2026.
Given that he won the Cadillac Championship by a half-dozen shots and World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler was the cl
