LOS ANGELES — Decipher this: They wrapped up a nerve-addling golf major on Sunday in which the contenders distilled to a guy in his 58th major tournament with four wins and 28 top-10 finishes (Rory McIlroy), a guy in his 48th major tournament with 12 top-10s (Rickie Fowler), a guy in his 16th major tournament with a Masters title and eight top-10s and a No. 1 world ranking (Scottie Scheffler), and a guy in his seventh major tournament after spending the first six in unbroken anonymity (Wyndham Clark).
Guess what: That last guy won.
What the hell is experience, anyway?
As the 123rd U.S. Open became the latest golf adventure brimming with a fine senselessness, that last guy ended up mastering the 18th green even as the crowd closed in behind him and made a maelstrom. Wyndham Clark ended up sending a 60-foot lag putt to last the rest of his life to 18 inches, knocking that in for a clinching par, pumping his arms, sobbing on caddie John Ellis’s shoulder and then sobbing in his cap. He ended up transforming his record in seven majors thus far into one freaky sight: cut, tied for 75th, cut, cut, tied for 76th, cut, win. And he ended up embodying the advice of his late mother, Lise, who died of breast cancer at 55 in 2013 and who told her son, “Play big.”
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Then he ended up walking around the pretty premises of Los Angeles Country Club in the gloaming with his new trophy, the second one in his PGA Tour life after the first arrived only last month. His family members and girlfriend followed around behind him, and he had said of his mother, “She’d be crying tears of joy,” and, “All I really wish is that my Mom could be here and I could just hug her and we could celebrate together. But I know she’s proud of me.”
His ease of presence belied the seriousness required to shoot 70, hold on to the 10 under par he had at breakfast, par the last two holes after bogeying Nos. 15 and 16, best McIlroy by one shot, best Scheffler by three, best a late-charging Cameron Smith by four, best Fowler (among others) by five, and become the lone reason McIlroy’s famed drought of major titles just yawned its way out to 33.
“Now maybe they’ll be chanting my name in the future,” Clark said after a Sunday spent hearing people chant Fowler’s.
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Who is Wyndham Clark? He’s a svelte, bearded, 29-year-old Coloradan who has treated himself to burdensome expectations since his teen years, who grew up playing famed Cherry Hills in Denver, who went to high school with NFL running back Christian McCaffrey, who thought of quitting the game in college when it used to make him storm off courses and drive away irked, and who believes in a frame of mind he calls “cocky.”
He has a Renoir of a short game, which let him spread self-rescuing beauty across Nos. 8, 9, 11 and 17, to name some junctures, while the seasoned guys around him either faded or couldn’t menace. “You know,” Clark said, “I feel like I belong on this stage, 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.”
Fowler, tied with Clark at 10 under par at day’s outset, saw a week that began with a U.S. Open-record 62 finish in reverse, as he bogeyed Nos. 2, 5, 8, 11, 12, 16 and 18 (among two birdies) to finish with a 75 and dip to 5 under par all told, five shots behind Clark. “I just didn’t have it today,” said a 34-year-old star on the rebound from a slump. “Iron play was very below average and didn’t make anything [putts].”
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Scheffler, three shots behind Clark and Fowler at day’s outset, sailed sideways in a sea of groaning putts until he got to 70, still three back. “I just felt like I wasn’t sharp enough today to move up the board,” he said.
McIlroy became Par Man, and while many a Par Man has won many a U.S. Open, it might have caused some fine giggling to see the Northern Irish surname “McIlroy” in the role of Par Man. Par Man made 16 pars, one birdie (on No. 1) and one bogey (on No. 14). A player capable of tour-guiding spectators through all manner of vegetation and misadventure, often with a brilliance to offset the strain, made 12 straight pars from holes Nos. 2 through 13. After he wedged a ball somehow into a wall of a bunker on No. 14 and bogeyed, he made four straight closing pars.
While his tee-to-green play refrained from error — he finished No. 1 in greens in regulation — his putting refrained from magic, as he finished tied for 42nd in that. He kept plopping approach shots nicely onto greens if not particularly close to cups, and his 36 putts mirrored his 36 putts from the 2022 British Open last July at St. Andrews, where Smith passed him by making transcendence while McIlroy made competence.
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“The last two real chances I’ve had at majors,” McIlroy said, “I feel like have been pretty similar performances, like St. Andrews last year and then here: not doing a lot wrong, but I didn’t make a birdie since the first hole today.”
Once he tossed in that bogey on No. 14, his nine-foot par bid rolling by on the right, his deficit stood at three once Clark arrived in the ensuing pairing (with Fowler), drove it 328 in the left fairway like somebody in his 58th major or something, reached the green in two and loosed another of his mighty lag putts from 20 feet to nine inches for a birdie. McIlroy’s only hope by then seemed to entail Clark realizing just what he was doing, having his knees start committing percussion and his shots start committing wandering.
Clark sort of complied. A maestro of putts inside 10 feet during the week, he bogeyed No. 15 from a tough eight and No. 16 from a tough seven. The lead stood at one. Here led — by just one — a guy who finally won on tour in early May at Quail Hollow in Charlotte, and who said he had tired of catching himself daydreaming of winning and had asked those around him to try to stop discussing the prospect. Here led a guy whose mother took him to a driving range when he was 3 to drain some of his energy, as Lise Clark told it in the Denver Post in 2009. She got him 100 balls. A man walked by. He asked how long the tyke had been playing golf. She said, “About 30 minutes.” The man said, “Don’t change his swing.”
By the time she recounted that story, a teenage Clark had won some things teens hoped to win in Colorado, and spoke openly of aspiring to No. 1 in the world, that’s all. Then he went to Oklahoma State and Oregon and wandered around as so many do, unable to win, what with winning so hard in the most inexplicable of sports. Then he won in Charlotte, and now he grabbed a U.S. Open lead with his beauty.
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He had ventured into weeds and reeds by the par-5 No. 8 green in front of the whole damned golfing public — he even whiffed at it once — but solved that by eventually pitching from behind that green from 70 feet to two inches so he could save bogey. He had gone downhill beside par-3 No. 9, disappearing from some views but for his head and shoulders, but he sent a hard and obedient chip to seven feet so he could save par. And on par-3 No. 11, he had sent a fine turn of thinking onto a slope of the green, where it stopped, looked around and began rolling slowly, then steadily, to four feet so he could save par. He exacted beauty upon beauty until the beast in him could hang on.
Finally he had two holes to play toward something that turns up in a million daydreams. He hit the fairway on No. 17. He hit the fairway on No. 18. He sent another shining chip from 53 feet to 14 inches on No. 17. He made that pressurized lag putt on No. 18. “I made some great shots coming down at the end,” he said, “and although I made a couple of bogeys and it seemed like maybe the rails were coming off, I was, inside, pretty calm. I’m really pleased with myself with how I performed.”
He had, after all, played big.
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