SOUTHAMPTON, NY – A reputation is earned in drops and lost in buckets.
Shinnecock Hills knows this. They have spent more than a century – 135 painstaking years – slowly accumulating the social, political and golfing capital that has brought them here: A place considered one of the best and most prestigious private golf clubs anywhere in the world.
Wyndham Clark knows this too. Maybe not at the start of this week’s US Open, but certainly after Sunday afternoon, when he endured several hours of abuse at the hands of a particularly nasty Long Island crowd en route to his second US Open championship.
I don’t pretend to know much about Clark. I have seen what was reported about his behavior at the US Open last year at Oakmont, when he destroyed a sacred dressing room after a bad round of golf and later seemed disinterested in expressing remorse. I’ve seen his bad swings result in angry tantrums, including once accidentally narrowly avoiding hitting a volunteer (those expressions of remorse were more sincere). And of course I’ve seen the rehabilitative efforts he’s undergone in recent months to remove the stigma that he’s a tough guy, or worse, a bad guy.
But after seeing him Sunday at Shinnecock, I do know this: Wyndham Clark has some serious backbone.
In case you didn’t already know, it is very difficult to win a major championship. It can be said that it’s harder to win a US Open. A national championship win is an experience akin to waterboarding—except here the drowning isn’t simulated. You don’t win an Open. you bear through one, crashing wildly through a vast ocean of failures and mishaps to eventually come out with a lower score than your competitors. Too often, it takes every last ounce out of you.
That’s because the US Open is the ultimate test of yourself. She reveals things you wouldn’t dare say out loud. It pushes you where you are weakest. It shows you who you really are.
To win a major championship, as Clark did Sunday at Shinnecock — in which he was competing not just against himself, but against all of Shinnecock — was a reflection of Clark’s innermost self, which even he can’t spell.
So how did he do it?
He did it laughing.
“I was joking about it with (caddie) Dave (Pelekoudas),” Clark said. “If we heard somebody cheering for me, I’d go, Oh, there’s a person I like. So we’d kind of make a joke and make it maybe a little light-hearted.”
Laughter must have been good medicine for Clark on Sunday afternoon, because he needed it badly by the time he got home. A day that had started with a six-shot lead had dwindled to two, and Sam Burns was charging. Meanwhile, the crowd had gotten so out of control that they had even taken over the clubhouse at Shinnecock, where throngs of people sat on the porch to watch Clark hit his tee shot on the 13th.
“ENTER THE BUNKER!” shouted a fan in the stands near the tee box, a shout that resulted in loud laughter inside the clubhouse.
Directly outside the club, a volunteer watched him mercilessly.
“I feel bad for the guy,” he said. “But he brought this on himself.”
Clark has brought it on himself – but it’s unclear if he (or anyone) had earned exactly what he got on Sunday afternoon. Sure, Wyndham had done no better than the jeering crowds when he blew up the dressing room at Oakmont, but there’s an old saying about two wrongs. There was also another, much simpler reason why the galleries at the US Open Sunday would have been wise to exercise better judgment: The man they hoped to shake was irresistible.
Fans thought they could get under his skin, but they were wrong. Wyndham Clark had backbone.
“It’s bad to be weak or to root against, but I can come out ahead,” he said Sunday with a smile. “There’s nothing like winning an away game of sorts, if you will.”
That may not be enough to win back the crowds’ love by the time he starts his final major of the year at Royal Birkdale. Hell, it might not be enough to win back their adoration … ever.
“I hope I don’t become the heel of the PGA,” Clark said. “I guess if I am, any press is good press, right?”
On Sunday at Shinnecock, Wyndham Clark didn’t change his reputation.
But he added a few points in the right direction … and a few pounds of silver.
