SOUTHPORT, England — Kyle Sterbinsky stood on the far left side of the Open Championship driving range and looked … warm. The sun seemed to canvas his entire face as he stared off in the distance at the big, golden leaderboard maybe 250 yards away. He couldn’t have been scanning the scene for info because his eyes were no longer useful. He and Cameron Young, the star golfer he caddies for, had reached those pregnant seconds when golf history is made. All they could do was listen.
There are two schools of thought that arise on Sundays at golf tournaments. Either you want to be the man in the house — shoes off, hat backwards, watching how your score holds up — or you want the ball and holes to play to beat the man in the house.
Almost exactly two hours before this driving range scene, at 4:36 p.m., you wanted to be Cam Young. Even though he sounded and looked defeated, he was the man in the house.
Young had just shot his best round of the week, a 64 that pushed him to a 72-hole score of nine under. He had figured, while playing the 18th hole, that 10 under might do it. He pulled 6-iron from a fairway bunker, opened the club face and made a swing he’ll be thinking about for a very long time.
Young’s ball struck the face of the bunker, popped straight up and finished maybe 30 feet away. He quickly recovered for a bogey. It was the best he could do … but suddenly it seemed like it wasn’t enough.
When he met the media, Young didn’t think he had done enough to win the tournament. He had spent the afternoon obsessed with his process, counting his breaths between shots, 10 breaths at a time. Now he wished he’d spent a few beats thinking about 10 under. He rued the Saturday round where he shot 73, a C-plus day, by his own assessment, filled with a bunch of bad breaks. That’s why Young promised reporters he’d start packing up his things as soon as possible, just to be efficient.
He was clearly in no rush, answering 23 questions from the press, and then he made the 100-yard walk to the player clubhouse completely alone, staring at his phone the entire way. If he had dared to look up, he would have noticed the navy Open flags above him, flapping harder than they had all day. Sterbinsky left the clubs at the clubhouse entrance, just in case.
Sterbinsky himself was in the second-floor player dining, with a plate of food in front of him and his girlfriend by his side. After watching 20 minutes of coverage, that exhilarating thought bubbled up for the first time. We might have done enough. That’s when the numbness started to hit, he said, as each top pro tumbled off the leaderboard. Sam Burns first, Si Woo Kim next, then the Kiwi, Ryan Fox. Pro golfers and their caddies are trained to not look too far ahead, but you can’t help it when you’re in the house and it’s out of your control.
“And then,” Sterbinsky said, “we kind of found ourselves with the solo lead.”
What are you supposed to do when a golf tournament falls into your lap? Sterbinsky, one of Young’s teammates at Wake Forest, has been looping for him for 14 months. He’s seen victories at Doral and TPC Sawgrass in that time, and stewarded a handful of near-misses at majors. He had not seen anything like this.
“This was my first time dealing with this type of pressure and playoff potential,” he said.
So he worked hard to reach some sort of zen. Not too high, not too low. Aware of all outcomes. At peace with all outcomes.
The player clubhouse is temporary and erected from steel and hard plastic for one week alone. It may be sterile, but if you’re the man in the house, while the wind is whipping outside, it’s a perfect place to hang and watch every player from later tee times come through. It’s especially fun when those players are thoroughly impressed by your score.
First Scottie Scheffler’s dad stopped by, carrying his new walking stick, a gift from his son. Justin Thomas’ dad plopped down next to Young, drinking a beer. Young ate a salad and sat next to his dad, perhaps the only member of the Young squad with a good idea of how to handle the next few hours. David Young is a PGA Professional who has seen tense, giddy, restless waits before.
After about an hour as clubhouse leaders, Sterbinsky stepped outside to take a call and was greeted by the entire golfing world. Multiple broadcast cameras had set up at the clubhouse entrance. Another broadcast crew had begged its way upstairs to set up the Cameron Cam. Suddenly, everybody knew Young and his caddie were in the center of the room. Sitting, waiting.
These moments in contention can fly by just as they can creep slowly.
At 5:44, they watched Fox’s ball roll up against the wall of a greenside bunker.
At 5:51, they watched him make one helluva bogey.
At 5:57, Young emerged from the clubhouse alongside his dad and swing coach.
At 6:03, Cam shook the creases out of a sweater and pulled it over his torso. That evening seabreeze was cooling everything down.
At 6:07, he finished a short putting session and started to make some full swings.
At 6:10, three more cameras and 15 spectators had filled the lowest seat in the nearby grandstand.
At 6:13, Cam checked the Open app on his phone and saw Fox was in another bunker.
At 6:18, they heard a sympathetic groan from the bleachers on 17, maybe 300 yards away. Fox made par where he could have made birdie. Phew.
This is where things went from nervy to confident. They had to. Fox was headed to the 18th, which had been a nightmare factory for golfers all afternoon long. Surely Fox would make a 4 or worse on the second-hardest hole on the course. As they waited for Fox to hit his tee shot, Young mentioned how he hadn’t seen an R&A official in hours and wanted to know the playoff format.
Young started hammering low, bullet drivers. If he pivoted 30 degrees, he could have sent one that reached Fox himself, playing up the 18th. The broadcast cameras had been rolling on the man in the house for so long that they needed an emergency battery change.
How about Young’s phone battery? Maybe he had the chance to charge it while packing for his Monday flight home. He famously doesn’t have social media, and promises that his phone usage craters during non-tournament weeks. But when you’re the man in the clubhouse? The phone becomes your pacifier. The texts come streaming in. You open the weather app and check the wind again. You check on your counterpart’s progress via the Open’s shot-tracking leaderboard. If Young had looked at DataGolf as Fox walked up the fairway, he would have seen something else: The stats gurus over there rated his odds to win at 67 precent.
Instead, Fox tapped on his screen once more, turned to his dad and said two words: Eleven-seven. Fox had 11 feet, seven inches for birdie and the Open Championship. It was 6:33 p.m. local time, almost two hours to the minute after Young told reporters that he thought 10 under would do the job.
Which brings us to that sun-drenched stare down between Sterbinsky and the leaderboard off in the distance. They had done all they could do. For twenty-two seconds after Burns tapped in for his par, they sat in silence.
When is it coming. When is it coming. Groan please, groan please, groan please.
Then they heard the worst roar of their life. Ten under did do the job. Ryan Fox had won the Open.
The man in the house had lost.