Wyndham Clark rebounds from Masters disappointment with 3rd-place showing at RBC Heritage, his 4th top-3 in his last 8 PGA Tour events; Denver native now a career-best third in world rankings
By Gary Baines – 4/22/2024
Wyndham Clark did his best over the weekend to show that his performance in his first Masters — one plagued by very windy conditions and some lousy luck regarding tee times, along with uncharacteristically frittering away strokes — was an aberration.
The Denver native bounced back from a frustrating missed cut at Augusta National with a third-place showing on Monday at the RBC Heritage, a PGA Tour signature event in Hilton Head Island, S.C.
That gives Clark four top-3 finishes in his last eight events, including one victory. In other words, the Valor Christian grad is very much in the conversation for best male golfer on the planet not named Scottie Scheffler. Scheffler won on Monday for the fourth time in five starts, including a victory at the Masters.
For the record, Clark has placed second or third in three of Scheffler’s recent victories, including on Monday.
“Everyone is trying to chase Scottie and he’s making it really tough because he keeps winning,” the impending Colorado Golf Hall of Famer said Sunday after finishing his final round. Scheffler wrapped up the victory on Monday with his final three holes after weather on Sunday afternoon prevented an on-time finish for him.
At Hilton Head, Clark made quite a run in the final round, playing his first five holes in 5 under par and shooting a 7-under 29 on the front nine. He added a birdie on 11, making him 8 under and well within striking distance of the course record of 61.
But a double bogey on 12 — where he hit his tee shot right, then tried to punch an iron through an opening but instead ricocheted his ball off a tree and out of bounds en route to a double bogey — proved costly. In fact, he ended up going 4 over par in four holes (12-15) before rebounding with birdies and 16 and 17.
“I was trying to get myself in the top 10 and have a good finish, and it was kind of fun for a little bit,” Clark said of the day. “It seemed like maybe we had a chance to do something crazy. All in all, (it was) a great day.”
Clark, whose three PGA Tour victories in the last year include one in the U.S. Open, finished with a 6-under-par 65, which gave him scores of 66-66-65 on the last three days. Overall, he checked in at 15 under — four behind Scheffler — good for a $1.16 million payday. In just the first four months of 2024, Clark has earned more than $9.1 million in official prize money.
Sunday was another one of those impressive short-game days for Clark — now a career-best third in the world rankings — as he sank four putts and one chip in the 12- to 31-foot range.
Clark trails only Scheffler in the season-long FedExCup standings — albeit by a very large margin: 2,023 points.
“Being second or third in the points list is huge for me,” Clark said. “It’s one really good week and hopefully it propels me for the rest of the year.”
For all the scores from the RBC Heritage, CLICK HERE.
About the Writer: Gary Baines has covered golf in Colorado continuously since 1983. He was a sports writer at the Daily Camera newspaper in Boulder, then the sports editor there, and has written regularly for ColoradoGolf.org since 2009. The University of Colorado Evans Scholar alum was inducted into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame in 2022. He owns and operates ColoradoGolfJournal.com