This time last year, Wyndham Clark rolled into the Open at Royal Liverpool as US Open champ. This week, ahead of the 152nd Open at Royal Troon, Clark was not even among the 15 betting favourites, checking in at $60 or higher on most pre-tournament odds.
Another major week is upon us and that means Golf Channel crash-test dummy Johnson Wagner is zipping up the fire suit, taking out a second life insurance policy and getting ready to step into the breach once again.
The squad named The Bay Club and representing the San Francisco Bay Area will feature reigning US Open champion Wyndham Clark, PGA Tour rookie and world No.6 Ludvig Aberg, 2019 Open Championship winner Shane Lowry and Australia’s Min Woo Lee.
For a second straight year, Justin Thomas painfully missed the cut at the Masters – and proceeded to help a handful of his peers grab weekend tee times at Augusta National when they thought they were heading home early.
With a mere couple of taps of his club behind a ball in the rough, reigning US Open champion Wyndham Clark caused a stir on the television broadcast of the Arnold Palmer Invitational, and, of course, in many golf corners of social media.
A win is a win. It doesn’t matter if it’s 54 holes, Wyndham Clark is your new AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am victor. That comes with 700 FedEx Cup points, $US3.6 million and (apparently) an ice cream treat that’ll make LIV golfers second-guess their decision.
Clark, who ranked first in strokes gained/putting for the week, picked up more than six shots on the field on the greens in his first competitive outing with the Odyssey Ai One Jailbird Cruiser mallet.
Word among the golf cognoscenti was that LIV’s financial proposal fell short of the ballpark Clark’s team had in mind and that LIV baulked at Clark’s counter-offer.
Wyndham Clark got an enormous rules break during his otherwise spectacular, record-breaking round of 60 in the third round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. And on the day after Groundhog Day in the US, he has some kind of critter to thank for it.
Clark’s 60 eclipsed the professional competition course record at Pebble Beach by two shots and the overall competitive record of 61, set by current DP World Tour player Hurley Long in the 2017 collegiate Carmel Cup.