Array
When it’s your time it’s your time.
This week was Wyndham Clark’s time.
It was not Rickie Fowler’s time.
It was not Rory McIlroy’s or Scottie Scheffler’s time again.
The 29-year-old Clark is a major champion, winner of the 123rd U.S. Open, after surviving a tense final round Sunday with an even-par 70 to finish 10-under, one shot clear of McIlroy, whose drought without a major championship is careening toward a decade.
Clark entered the week having played in six career majors, missing the cut in four of them. In the two in which he made the cut, Clark finished tied for 75th in the 2021 PGA Championship and he tied for 76th in the last year’s British Open.
Those results now are irrelevant.
Clark is a major champion, his life forever changed.
On a week that, for so long, looked like it was going to be about Fowler winning his first career major to complete what has been a marvelous renaissance of his career that had been wayward for the past three years, Clark quietly hung around.
He played solid, clutch golf and seized the moments when he had to.
The other contenders around Clark, all of whom have far more accomplished résumés, consistently failed to seize the big moments on Sunday.
There was McIlroy three-putting the par-5 eighth hole to make one of the most disappointing pars of his career and then bogeying the par-5 14th hole. McIlroy birdied the first hole and proceeded to par the next 12 holes before the bogey on 14.
Pars were never going to be good enough, just like his 2-under final round at the 2022 British Open wasn’t enough to hold off winner Cam Smith, who was posting a 64.
Fowler, perhaps mentally exhausted from the weight of having at least a share of the lead for all four days, lost his putting touch Sunday. Really, Fowler looked like he lost it on Saturday in the third round, when he missed a short par putt on the 18th hole to relinquish sole possession of the lead.
