Matthew Fitzpatrick, Cam Young can make massive statements at wide-open PGA Championship

We live in a golf world right now where the two top-ranked players have taken a back seat to two players even hotter than they are entering this week’s PGA Championship at Aronimink. This makes the season’s second major championship a must-watch. Scottie Scheffler, the reigning world No.1 for the past three years and the defending PGA champion, and Rory McIlroy, ranked No.

2 and fresh off winning his second consecutive Masters, surely are two of the favorites to hoist the Wanamaker Trophy. But it’s Matthew Fitzpatrick and Cameron Young who enter the season’s second major championship as the game’s hottest players. Fitzpatrick has won three times this year and Young has won twice — first at the Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass, where he defeated Fitzpatrick on the 72nd hole, then two weeks ago at Doral, where he dusted the field by six shots, with Scheffler the runner-up. “If you had to put one word over both of those players, it’s ‘belief,’” Dottie Pepper, the former LPGA star and current CBS lead on-course reporter, said of Young and Fitzpatrick this week.“They both now believe they can get it done in the most difficult of circumstances.To have those two not [in contention] at Aronimink would be shocking.” Trevor Immelman, lead CBS analyst, said he felt this run Young is on “feels like it’s been coming for a long time.’’ “Scottie and Rory have been dominating the sport for the last handful of years and have won a ton of times,’’ he said.

“But I put Cam Young — even though he’s got just three wins now on the PGA Tour — on that same level.That’s how much respect I have for his ability and talent.

Now that he has that extra intangible of confidence and self-belief, he’s going to be a real problem for these other guys over the next few years. “Matt Fitzpatrick is a major champion.… He knows exactly what it takes.

Both of these guys are going to be coming into this PGA Championship on the same level...