There are some PGA Tour players who prefer to not look at a leaderboard during their round. Then there’s Cam Davis, who spent most of his 2023 season eschewing a peek at the FedEx Cup standings.

At least he did so until it mattered. Which was, well, recently.

Davis is one of two players (along with Hideki Matsuyama) who played his way into the BMW Championship, the second leg of the three-tournament FedEx Cup Playoffs, arriving at Olympia Fields Country Club in 45th place in the FedEx Cup standings. The Australian native knew exactly what he had to do last week at the FedEx St Jude Championship, coming up with a nervy T-6 finish at TPC Southwind, his third straight top-10, after he entered the week 62nd.

When he missed the cut at last month’s Genesis Scottish Open and then didn’t get into the Open Championship as the first alternate, he was outside the top 70 needed to advance to the playoffs. Then Davis turned in a T-10 at the 3M Open and T-7 at the Wyndham Championship. It was gut-check time, and it turned out his gut was OK. Apparently, it’s a pattern with him.

“I feel like when it is kind of a do-or-die situation, some of the inhibitor actually is taken off in my brain,” Davis said. “I’ve got free rein. The only way I’m going to succeed is if I make a really committed swing and not just go for broke but definitely play without fear of making a mistake.”

Davis, 28, who played in the 2015 US Amateur at Olympia Fields, had his sights set on making the top 50 since the tour announced in March that reaching that status will exempt players into the more lucrative $20 million signature events in 2024. Oddly, he spent most of the year intent on not tracking his progress. Who needs that headache? Not Davis.

“I feel like it’s an extra element that up until the end of the year, I feel like it hurts more than helps knowing [where he stood],” he said. “Even if you win early in the year, you still need to play a lot of great golf to maintain your standing and keep improving, and I feel like anything extra on top of just the things you can control and the things you’re trying to do week in and week out to play well is just not really needed as something to clutter up the mind.

“I’ve played with it on the back of my mind the first couple of seasons I was out here, and I don’t feel like it really helped me at all,” he added. “It just created more pressure each week. I feel like I’ve gotten to the point where I’m starting to figure out what works and what doesn’t when it comes to what I think about.”

That’s not to say he didn’t have a sense of how he was faring. He began the year with a strange illness that contributed to him missing five straight cuts starting at The American Express. “A really great way to start the year, no confidence whatsoever,” he said.

He ended the poor run with a T-6 at the Players and then finished T-4 at the PGA Championship at Oak Hill, his best effort ever in a major. Those were the high points. But Davis, ranked 49th in the world, still didn’t keep track of his progress until the final push.

The approach has been a success. Another top-10 and the one-time tour winner will have a chance to advance again to next week’s Tour Championship for the top 30 in the points standings. The perks for that distinction include a Masters berth and a two-year PGA Tour exemption.

“This year a lot of the time was kind of spent stressing about whether or not I was going to make it to the playoffs or keep my card or how was it going to be at the end of the season,” Davis admitted. “To kind of turn it around and really finish strong like this is really satisfying because I’ve pulled myself out of some pretty deep holes this year.”

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By Joel Beall
Cameron Davis can take solace that his marriage is not the first to put the kibosh on a golf trip.

Davis, who captured his first PGA Tour win days ago at the Rocket Mortgage Classic, was listed as an alternate for next week’s Open Championship. On Thursday morning that standing granted Davis a spot in the Open field, as Kevin Na dropped out due to the myriad travel restrictions facing players making their way to Royal St. George’s.

However, the R&A announced Na’s position would be filled not by Davis but by two-time major winner Martin Kaymer because Davis was “unable to travel.” Following his first round at the John Deere Classic Thursday—where Davis posted a 4-under 67—Davis clarified why he had to pass.

Chiefly, because he can’t leave the country … thanks to tying the knot.

“Yeah, I got married last year in September and decided to start the green card process to make travelling in and out of the country so much easier,” Davis explained. “But, unfortunately, six months I’m not going to be able to leave the States while that’s getting processed. That means I’m not able to go next week.”

That, my friends, is a tough swallow. We suppose this is more of a bureaucratic red tape issue than one relating to matrimony, although the latter led to the former so we’ll let you be the judge of that.

The 28-year-old Aussie has played in the Open just once in his career, turning in a respectable T-39 in his debut at Carnoustie in 2018, and clearly his game is trending in the right direction. If there’s any comfort, Davis will at least spend next week getting a chance to take in last week’s breakthrough.

“’I’m looking forward to seeing my family and celebrating back in Seattle next week and recharging a little bit because this week is already a bit of a grind to get through,” Davis said. “I’m pretty tired. It’ll be nice to relax.”

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By Dave Shedloski
The twilight rate has been abused considerably the last two weeks on the PGA Tour. But someone has to pay the bill. Last week it was Kramer Hickock. This week, after pushing a five-foot par putt right of the cup, Troy Merritt got stuck with the tab.

Cam Davis was the beneficiary of Merritt’s ill fortune, picking up his first tour title at the Rocket Mortgage Classic on the fifth hole of a sudden-death playoff, one that also included Joaquin Niemann, who suffered said death suddenly by falling out on the first playoff hole. A native of Sydney, Australia, Davis wasn’t handed the title on a steamy Sunday in Detroit. Not at all. He hit a series of impressively good shots under pressure in overtime at Detroit Golf Club only to hit a series of less than good putts that kept Merritt hanging around and hopeful.

On all five playoff holes Davis had victory on his putter and couldn’t put the irksome Idahoan away as they traded pars, just as Hickock did the week before at the Travelers Championship before Harris English finally ended it on the eighth extra hole with a birdie. This time, par was enough, and the transplanted Aussie, who now makes his home in Seattle, became the seventh first-time winner in this extended season.

Gregory Shamus
Davis reacts to a putt to get him into the playoff on the 18th green during the final round of the Rocket Mortgage Classic.

“I just kept on putting good swings on it,” said Davis, 26, a 6-foot-4 specimen who hadn’t sniffed a chance to win since January and has had just two top-10 finishes previously this season. “I hit a lot of good putts and a couple of not-so-great putts, but I thought a few of them had a chance to go in up until a few feet out. I had to keep on putting it in play and giving myself chances, that’s all I was trying to do. It worked out all right.”

This being the Fourth of July, there had to be fireworks, and Davis provided that, too, before his steady overtime duty. Trailing throughout a day of remarkable scoring across the board—the field scoring average was 69.649—Davis needed something special and got it at the par-5 17th hole when he banged in a bunker shot for eagle. Then he birdied 18 from six feet for a five-under 67 and got into the house at 18-under 270, one better than Alex Noren, who for a long time was the clubhouse leader at 17 under after a 64.

Ken Murray/Icon Sportswire
Joaquin Niemann (CHL) lets go of his club following his tee shot on 3 during the Rocket Mortgage Classic.

“It’s the only reason I’m sitting here right now,” said Davis of the bunker shot that “jammed the flag,” after he splashed out a bit to aggressively but got help from the flagstick. “I don’t know, those I guess are the sort of things that need to go your way if you want to keep pushing forward.”

Niemann and Merritt, the third-round co-leaders, eventually joined him with birdies at 17, but couldn’t sink a game-winner at the last. Each closed with 68. Merritt, 35, the only American among the trio and the crowd favourite on Independence Day, birdied four of his last six for a late surge that nearly paid off in his third tour title and first in three years.

A word about Niemann, 22, who did everything necessary to win the tournament—except shoot the lowest score. The guy didn’t make a bogey in 72 holes. Too bad he had to go 73. He nuked a wedge from 144 yards on the first playoff hole that found a lie in the rough that a cow couldn’t chew through. He chopped out to 41 feet and came up inches short of a par to stay in the playoff. The native of Chile settled for his third runner-up of the season and became the second player of the year to go 72 holes without a bogey, joining Andrew Putnam at the Waste Management Phoenix Open. There have been nine playoffs this season and Niemann has lost two of them, the other to English at the Sentry Tournament of Champions.

Davis, winner of the 2017 Australian Open, never had been in a playoff. At least he couldn’t ever remember being in one. He couldn’t recollect any experience that prepared him for the pressure he faced in trying to win on tour—something, he said on Saturday, “I’ve been working for my whole life.”

Because of the pandemic, he hadn’t seen his swing coach since 2019, and he had come into the event after three weeks off and nothing better than a lone top-25 since February. But he spent some quality time at home with Neale Smith, a top golf psychologist, and he believed that made all the difference when the pressure kept ratcheting up and he kept letting Merritt off the hook.

“We just really did a lot of work on just routine, and that sort of stuff is really what you fall back on,” Davis said. “I don’t really have any experiences in the past that kind of prepared me for it. Australian Open back years ago now was I guess similar in that I didn’t really know where I stood when I was coming down the last couple of holes, and I was able to hit some good ones and get across the line. I guess I wasn’t thinking about that, though, today. I was just thinking about all the things that I had done all this week leading up to that point and just tried to keep it going. It was just putting all that stuff on repeat.”

Eventually, repeat paid off. In golf, it usually does. It was worth $1.35 million and some job security.

Davis broke through in his 71st PGA Tour start, and the former Mackenzie Tour and Korn Ferry Tour player, ranked 134th in the world, still was coming to grips with what he had done.

“It’s still so surreal for me. I’ve been in some good positions before, but to play the golf that I played coming down the stretch was just awesome,” he said. “So, I’m sure I’ll be able to look back, I’m sure some of it’s on camera, so I’ll be able to relive some moments as well and really enjoy it again. But this has been awesome. I’m really, really happy with where I sit right now.”

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