Inside Wyndham Clark’s U.S. Open triumph

LOS ANGELES — When you find out what was bubbling under the surface, yearning to come out the moment the ball hit the bottom of that cup, the more what happened here becomes apparent. It was all there, just underneath. The grief. The failures. The hopes and the doubts. Winning a U.S. Open came when Wyndham Clark understood not to go to war with those feelings but to make peace with them.

Clark is the type to scream in the car driving to nowhere, to punch walls and break clubs. He feels things.

He wants to go fast. Go, go, go, on a golf course. He wants to walk up to his ball and hit it as quickly as he can. That’s the story of Sunday night, a man wrestling with that urge. Go fast. Slow down. Go fast. Slow down.

He walked to his ball buried so deep into the eighth green fescue that even he couldn’t see it. He was determined to go, his mind speeding up with a two-shot lead and all those scenarios playing out in front of him. The collapse. The close call. Being the PGA Tour random who put up an admirable fight but ultimately lost to Rory McIlroy. That was the script, right?

Clark went up to that ball, pulled back and hacked it. And he missed. He turned so fast and grimaced with his arms prepared to fling the club to the fifth tee box.

But his caddie, John Ellis, pulled him aside and said, “Dub, we’re fine.”

Clark slowed down. He took his time, went back to the ball and got under it, floating it high into the sky to the rough on the other side of the green. Then from that thick bermuda rough, Clark hit a near-perfect chip within two feet of the pin and tapped in for a bogey. He lost a stroke, but in reality, he won the U.S. Open right there.

This particular tournament has always been more about when you don’t have it, when your driver is going wide left and your irons aren’t hitting clean and you just bogeyed two in a row. It’s the major most determined by how you respond when your ball is buried in the fescue and you are fully prepared to throw your club, of how you respond when confidence is shaken. That is U.S. Open golf, and on a Sunday in which seemingly the entire golf world pleaded for McIlroy to recover on the back nine and overtake the usurper Clark, the latter won it by those moments in which he didn’t have his best stuff.

So he walked to the 18th fairway needing just a par to win the national championship. His mind was surely going fast. Slow down, he had to remind himself. And then the 29-year-old hit a beautiful iron shot onto the front of the green. Next came the lag putt. Next came the tap-in to win it.

And those feelings burst out onto the surface. Clark screamed and thrust his body into a flex. He and Ellis grabbed each other, Clark thumping Ellis’ back over and over. His face didn’t just cry as much as it melted, this grown man letting each and every brick of his guard down, because this was it.

Wyndham Clark won the U.S. Open. You didn’t see it coming. Even he didn’t see it coming. But then you remember how his late mother, Lise, always greeted him and you realize it was all in the plan.

“Love you, winner.”

Clark heard the chants of “Rickie, Rickie, Rickie!” as he played both weekend rounds in the final group with Rickie Fowler, like McIlroy a beloved golf star who Los Angeles Country Club fell in love with all week. His mental coach, Julie Elion, told him, “Every time you hear someone chant ‘Rickie,’ think of your goals and get cocky and go show them who you are.”

“Now maybe they’ll be chanting my name in the future,” Clark said.

In reality, Clark and Fowler are two former Oklahoma State Cowboys golfers who’ve known each other for years, who share identical putters and kept things light together during the biggest two rounds of their careers. After Clark sunk his final putt, Fowler embraced Clark and said, “Your mom was with you. She’d be very proud.”

Wyndham Clark and caddy John Ellis have a tight relationship that has sustained throughout Clark’s PGA Tour career. (Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)

But Fowler also entered Sunday a co-leader with Clark at 10-under par, and he failed to stay steady when his game wasn’t there. His chips from the rough flew past the hole. His makeable putts struggled to fall. Fowler shot a disappointing 75 to drop to T5.

See, on Thursday and Friday, Clark’s rise up the leaderboard was really about his putter, gaining nearly three strokes putting compared to the field. On Saturday, it was his driver, launching the third-best driving numbers of the round to put himself in good position. If anything, his greatest strength is his ball striking and he was average in that department compared to the field.

But Clark had the round Sunday somebody like four-time major champ McIlroy was supposed to have. The kind of round in which you go get it in the most difficult moments. They had the same final round score, yeah, but golf is about those pivot point moments where it’s kill or be killed.

First there was Clark’s bogey save on No. 8. Then, on the next hole, his tee shot on the par 3 went into the front left rough. Clark had to put one foot in the bunker and one in the rough just to get a shot off, and he had to aim in the exact opposite way of the hole. He chipped it to the center of the green and it seemed to completely stop, but then momentum started the opposite way, and it rolled down the slope for a seven-foot putt. It was even more impressive than No. 8.

On the par-3 No. 11, his tee shot went left and past the green, rolling down a steep hill and leaving a brutal pitch to an uphill close pin. And he stuck it, the ball nearly stopping at contact and rolling a centimeter away from falling for a birdie. Another par save.

But the shot from Clark’s victory that most will remember was the type of moment that will remind what his game is capable of. Fittingly moments after McIlroy’s disastrous bogey on No. 14 — having a ball embedded in a bunker, getting free relief only to still miss his par putt — Clark pulled out a wood from the fairway and hit a miraculous, winding fade that slid onto the front left nook of the green and rolled around a bunker to set up an eagle putt. Clark birdied, took a three-shot lead and seemingly had it clinched.

Ridiculous approach from @Wyndham_Clark 🔥

He leads by three after another clutch birdie on 14 @USOpenGolf. pic.twitter.com/9cn7VdO9N7

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) June 19, 2023

That was far from the case. He sped up, thinking about winning a U.S. Open. He made a mess of 15, hitting a poor chip and then missing his par putt. Then 16 was simply a difficult hole, finding the rough on the drive and missing his par putt.

But he slowed down. He settled. He parred 17 and set up that moment on 18 to bring it all home.

And as the celebrations and the emotions exploded, he grabbed Ellis as tight as he could. They have both lost parents, Ellis losing his father a few years back and Sunday being Father’s Day. The two have known each other since Clark transferred to Oregon from Oklahoma State. They’d been through Clark’s years of darkness, missing countless cuts and considering quitting the sport altogether. Ellis, a former pro himself, had offers to take over for bigger-name golfers. He declined. And it all paid off.

“I owe a lot to him,” Clark said. “I feel like John is meant to be my caddie.”

It got annoying. So many people telling Clark how beautiful his swing was, but the beauty didn’t correlate with success. “People would say, ‘Oh, you have such a great swing,’ and I didn’t know where the ball was going.”

And he didn’t know where his career was going. He lost his mother as a teenager, and the pain and wandering loneliness led to his golf career stalling. He was calm and OK off the course, but on it he couldn’t control his anger. He’d break clubs when he didn’t even hit a bad shot and walk off of courses, hopping in the car and just driving. He transferred to Oregon and rediscovered his greatness, winning the Pac-12 golfer of the year award, but when he made the PGA Tour, he became a journeyman golfer ranked outside the top 200 in the world.

He stopped working with coaches. His swing needed to be his own, not something tinkered with by outsiders. Other than some slight work with Ellis, Clark is his own coach. It returned him to his youth, taking complete control of his game and remembering how to hit the kind of shots that he once hit. It was his, and that swing hit the shots that made him the U.S. champ.

That’s important to remember as we look back on this U.S. Open. This was not the major McIlroy gave away, or the one Fowler couldn’t grasp. It was the major Clark stepped up and conquered in a way that we so often plead with our greatest stars to do. As Xander Schauffele shot a disastrous 72 to keep his wait for a major on hold and as McIlroy’s quest for his first major in nine years continued, Clark went out and earned it.

Clark’s entire career is about finding somewhere to land when you’re spiraling, making him an ideal fit for the major where it matters how you play when you don’t have your best stuff. It takes scar tissue to win a U.S. Open, and few have more than Clark.

This moment was not some out-of-nowhere career week for a tour nobody. After years in the wilderness, Clark has jumped to No. 32 in OWGR and No. 12 in the DataGolf rankings. He won an elevated event in the Wells Fargo Championship. He’s earned top 10s and 20s at big events like the Phoenix Open, Memorial and Valspar. And now he’s a major champion and will likely earn easy qualification for the Ryder Cup this fall. He’s somebody you need to know.

Two years ago, he was prepared to quit golf. Now, he’s one of the best in the world.

“You know, I feel like I belong on this stage,” Clark said, “and even two, three years ago when people didn’t know who I was, I felt like I could still play and compete against the best players in the world. I felt like I’ve shown that this year.”

What’s next for Clark, though, is a discussion for another day. Because for so long Clark has tried to contain those emotions, tried to harness them and keep them from ruining his game or his life. Sunday, he won the U.S. Open, and he gets to let them out.

He gets to think of his mother, the woman who first introduced him to golf. He gets to think of the constant notes in his lunches of encouragement, of the years working to this point and all she didn’t get to see. He gets to think about how she loved him, and she believed in him long before he truly believed in himself.

“Love you, winner.”

(Top photo: Ross Kinnaird / Getty Images)