Wyndham Clark at Silverado—for himself and the team

NAPA — Wyndham Clark was playing ping pong in a garage when notified he had won the AT&T, which is a tournament of golf, not table tennis. It was February at Pebble Beach, and you’ve heard this before, officials decided to cancel the already rescheduled fourth round. Clark, of course, received the $3.6 million winner’s check, but something was missing.

“I would obviously would have gone back and played the fourth round and had the nerves and excitement that you do in the final round,” said Clark Wednesday. “And to come down 18 and hopefully with a lead and to win.”

Now it is September, a week and some seven months and roughly 150 miles north of Pebble Beach. Clark is back in Northern California at Silverado where starting Thursday he’ll be in the new Procore tournament. New in name, if not location.

This is a restart of sorts of the PGA Tour, using the term restart loosely. The Tour Championship was two weeks ago, there was a week off, and now here we go again, which is fine for Clark. He wants to improve his own game, and he wants to get ready for the Presidents Cup matches in two weeks at Montreal. Clark is 30 and has a major championship, the 2023 U.S. Open, yet he sounds like a kid just out of college when it comes to the way he approaches the game.

“I stopped trying to win and went out and played as well as I could,” he said.

The philosophy has been around for a long time, concentrating on the swing rather than the score. If you hit the ball properly and get a few putts in the hole you will succeed to a point.

He spoke of the consistency of Tiger Woods and currently Scottie Scheffler. 

“That’s what you want,” he said, “to be there at the time and give yourself a chance to win.”    

Golf is the most individual of sports. You are alone on a course aside from a caddy. That’s why so many of the pros, including Clark, enjoy the team competition such as the Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup.

“It’s amazing,” said Clark. “I feel like when you kind of get into that inner circle with some of the top players in the world, and this is all just coming from my perspective, I feel like it helps you stay in that circle because you’re around—iron sharpens iron, so when you’re around these great players, you feed off of their confidence and the things that they do and you pick up little things here and there that help your game.”

As does playing Silverado, says Clark. 

“But the golf course itself presents challenges off the tee,” he said. “It’s very narrow and it usually gets very firm and you just end up having some kind of really cool awkward shots into greens that makes it really fun. I’ve always really enjoyed this golf course.”

Probably more than ping pong in a garage.

A big night (yes night) for Wyndham at Pebble Beach

So the PGA Tour moves on to Arizona where presumably the golfers won’t  have to worry about soggy socks and storm warnings, and play will go the full 72 holes and conclude before dark.

Unlike the past weekend’s AT&T Pebble “Why didn’t we stick to a game that can be held indoors” Pro-Am?

True, the weather has been a major factor in the event  that began in the 1930s as the Crosby, but this year it was extreme to a point well, or well, is terror an exaggeration? Yes, but if you were getting pummeled, things were dicey. 

The situation at that good, old, seaside Pebble was no worse off than the rest of California, where (man the lifeboats) lowlands were flooded, hillsides washed away and trees were hoisted aloft onto roads by winds gusting into the 40s. Considering all that, it may be remarkable the tournament event was held.

Wyndham Clark was the winner. Or if you choose, the survivor.

Clark won the U.S. Open in June at Los  Angeles Country Club,  which, apropos of nothing but pertinent to many things, shows the man can play.  He certainly played Saturday, shooting a course-record 12-under par 60 at historic Pebble.

That gave him a 199 for 54 holes, 17-under par and a one-stroke advantage. The chance the fourth round might have to be pushed from Sunday to Monday placed Clark in a good position. The decision not to hold it, left him in a great position.    

They’ve played abbreviated AT&T's numerous times in the past. Dustin Johnson won at three rounds, but the decisions to reduce the number of holes came just before tee off or maybe late afternoon following round three.

This one, Sunday, came just before 6 pm, cocktail hour if you will. Some of the journalists were eating, not drinking, at a restaurant pub when one looked up from his iPhone and shouted, “It’s over. They called it off.”

Meaning all the 30-year old Clark had to do was sign his card and happily respond to questions after a Tour staff member notified him.

“Everyone was celebrating and congratulating me,” Clark said. “I even said to myself, ‘This feels like I just won the tournament,’ and yet we had another round to play. Today, waking up and they cancel the day, you’re trying not to go too far in the future. I get a call that we’re going to cancel and you’re the winner. It’s pretty surreal right now.”

Surreal or not, Wyndham Clark has the trophy and will have his 1st place check of $3.6 million.

You can buy a lot of umbrellas for that.

Clark an inch from a 59 at Pebble

PEBBLE BEACH — On a day when the big concern at Pebble Beach was about the future, Wyndham Clark did something about the present.

Clark shot a 12-under par 60 Saturday in the third round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, a course record.

And was within one inch, the distance his birdie putt at 17 halted short of the cup, of recording a magical 59.

“I hadn’t been in contention probably since my U.S. Open win,” conceded Clark. “To kind of have those nerves, and then obviously you’re chasing 59.” 

The U.S. Open was in June at Los Angeles. The ATT is in February on the  Monterey Peninsula where rain has been falling—it arrived again on  Saturday around 2:30 p.m. after play concluded—and according to forecasts will hit in apocalyptic proportions on Sunday.  

Which is the reason for the continual worry about what might happen. Will the course be flooded. Will competition need to be delayed? Will the tournament end on Monday? Or Tuesday (as last year and many years in the past)? Or not at all?   

PGA Tour officials will check the weather maps, the course conditions and decide early Sunday whether it’s go or no-go.

“We need to make every effort to play 72 holes,” said Gary Young of the Tour.

With 54 of those 72 completed, Wyndham—not unexpectedly after his 28-32-60, from two eagles, nine birdies and a bogey (on the par-3 12th)—is in front with a 17-under par 199.

Then comes Ludvig Aberg, 67-200, Matthieu Pavon, 66-201, Mark Hubbard, 65-202, and Thomas Detry, 69-202. 

Clark won twice in 2023, including the U.S Open at LACC, and then was chosen for America’s Ryder Cup team, which in early autumn was whipped by Europe. He hadn’t done much the start of 2024. Until Saturday.

Those 60s will get you on to any leader board.

“Probably what was going on internally,” said Clark, when asked what impressed him about his golf. “I started feeling the nerves at 10, and you know making that bogey putt at 12 was huge.”  

“But in my mind, I think in the past I would have kind of coasted and shot a nice 8-9 under. To keep the pedal down and to stay aggressive mentally was the impressive thing about myself. And then making all those putts was out of the ordinary, It was awesome.” 

The issue in golf, as in any sport, is to concentrate on the matter at hand.  Friday, Scottie Scheffler, confronted with a question about weather possibilities, said he was too busy thinking about how he might hit practice shots. In other words, what he could control, not about the havoc nature could create.

“As far as no round (Sunday),” said Clark, “I’ve definitely thought about it, with everyone saying how bad the weather is going to be. All right. Well, you definitely got to have the mentality that today’s the last day and go for broke.”  

He went, and almost broke 60.