Wyndham Clark heard it all day from the Shinnecock Hills crowd. Fans shouted for his golf ball to go in the bunker and the rough. One was ejected after yelling: “Don’t choke, Wyndham!”
He quieted them with a 52-foot putt to tap-in range for his second U.S. Open title in four years, avoiding the worst collapse in tournament history after his six-stroke lead dwindled to one.
Oh, how this anybody-but-Wyndham crowd would've relished that.
New York loves
a winner, but the one these fans really wanted to see on Sunday was Scottie Scheffler, who was chasing the career Grand Slam, or Sam Burns, who lost by a stroke. Not Clark.
Call it backlash for him damaging a locker in a fit of rage at Oakmont Country Club while missing the cut last year in the U.S. Open. Or for saying on TV that being surrounded by kids playing in the Masters Par 3 Contest was “great birth control." Or even for winning his first U.S. Open title in 2023 over fan favorites Rory McIlroy and Rickie Fowler.
Or maybe the folks spending their Father's Day at Shinnecock just wanted to see a little drama after Clark built leads of two, four and six strokes after each of the first three days.
“Man, they definitely didn’t want me to win,” Clark said.
It's rare for a golfer in the lead at a major championship — or any golfer for that matter — to be the subject of such derision. It happened to McIlroy at the Ryder Cup last September at Bethpage Black, also on Long Island, but that was a team competition. McIlroy was the star of the winning European side and U.S. fans went overboard in letting him have it.
Clark, 32, said he tried to see himself in an “underdog” role on Sunday, as he did in 2023.
“Anytime someone said something negative to me, I replaced it with something positive,” Clark said. “Some of it’s self-deserved. I kind of brought it on myself, but I also get it, too. Scottie was going for the career Grand Slam, and it hasn’t happened very often.”
Even so, the animosity appeared to rattle Clark early in his round. He bogeyed the second, sixth and seventh holes as fans threw their support behind Scheffler. They cheered Clark's mistakes while showering Scheffler with affection — even serenading the four-time major champion, who turned 30 on Sunday, with “Happy Birthday."
It was “Get in the bunker!” for Clark and “We love you Scottie!” for Scheffler, who tied for fourth at even par.
“You like seeing the fans cheer for you. I think sometimes it can get a little too much when, you know, balls are kind of going off greens and you start hearing cheers,” Scheffler said. “That felt a bit much to me.”
Anti-Clark fans cheered when he flared a shot under a pair of trash containers on the fourth hole and again when his shot on the seventh hole landed in a bunker.
“Wyndham gonna loose 'em,” a man said as Clark walked to his ball on 10.
“Get in the fescue!” a fan yelled after he teed off on 13. When his second shot landed on a precarious part of the green, the crowd chanted “Go! Go! Go!” and gleefully roared as the golf ball rolled off the back.
Clark won over the crowd, at least for a moment, on the 16th hole — punching out from the tall grass and pumped his fist after nailing a 24-foot birdie putt to go to 5-under par. For the moment, he held a two-stroke lead and the crowd's hopes of a different winner were fading.
But the taunts returned on the next hole as Clark backed off of his 8-foot par putt and then missed it. As Clark walked to the 18th tee, scratching his head with his hat in hand, a fan in the grandstand sang “Under Pressure."
“Yeah, it was tough, but I’m proud of myself that I battled through,” Clark said. “I mean, things really could have gotten away from me. I stood tough. Yeah, I would have liked to have won by more, but as long as you win, it doesn’t matter.”
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Associated Press writers Doug Ferguson and Eddie Pells contributed to this report.
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AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf
