Wyndham Clark Captures the U.S. Open
Two Tuesdays ago, as the golf world erupted into chaos and fury, Wyndham Clark did not rush to write a shock-and-awe Twitter post. He did not fume in a meeting with the PGA Tour commissioner about the surprise pact with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. He did not moralize or criticize or, really, do much of anything other than play golf.
His chosen course that Tuesday was the Los Angeles Country Club, which would host the U.S. Open, its debut major tournament, nine days later. A member of the club was Clark’s caddie, a friend turned tutor who knew some of the secrets of a North Course that only a handful of the game’s biggest stars had ever seen: how a putt might break here, how the speed might vary there, how firm the fairways might become.
The payoff came Sunday evening, when Clark, 29, outlasted Rory McIlroy at the U.S. Open by one stroke and lurched into the hallowed fraternity of major championship winners. Until Sunday, Clark’s best finish in a major had been a tie for 75th at a P.G.A. Championship. His two previous Open appearances were even worse, ending with missed cuts.
But his mother, his “always there supporter” who died nearly a decade ago, used to offer an ambitious admonition: “Play big.”
Source: The New York Times
