Wyndham Clark is having a career year after a terrible 2025. Now all he wants is to be loved
By Kyle Feldscher, CNN
Atlanta (CNN) — Wyndham Clark just wants to be loved.
The reigning US Open champion, who is sitting in third place in the FedEx Cup standings heading into this week, is enjoying his best year as a professional. Last week’s victory at the BMW Championship outside St. Louis was his third win of the year. But he’s noticed a trend with those three victories, as well as the three others that preceded them earlier in his career.
“You know, what’s funny is I’ve now had six wins, and I think in all six of those wins I was never the crowd favorite,” he said to reporters at Atlanta’s East Lake Golf Club ahead of the season-ending Tour Championship that tees off on Thursday.
“I always heard other people’s cheers. Maybe one day I’ll be who everyone is rooting for.”
And it’s not just on the course that he’s hoping to feel the love. One reporter in Atlanta was taken aback when Clark said part of his off-season plans is to “hopefully get engaged.”
“What do you mean, ‘hopefully’?” the reporter asked.
Clark replied, “Hopefully she says yes.”
It’s the sort of humility that comes with seeing your career bottom out a little more than 12 months earlier, sometimes in embarrassing fashion. One year before his triumph in the 2026 US Open, Clark missed the cut at the same tournament and took his frustrations out on the Oakmont Country Club locker room, causing enough damage that the famous club outside Pittsburgh banned him for life.
It was the low point of a bad year for Clark. He’s not exactly a fan favorite on tour, owing in part to those actions at Oakmont – his victory at Shinnecock Hills in New York was lamented by some golf fans who didn’t want to see him march to another major championship.
He was also the subject of some Zapruder-esque investigation on social media after a pre-shot routine during his final round on Sunday at the BMW. Clark took out multiple clubs and tested how they felt in the grass behind his ball after an errant drive on the 14th hole, something he called a routine move for tour players.
Internet sleuths accused him of trying to improve his lie in the rough, similar to allegations against Bryson DeChambeau at the British Open last month. Clark denied the accusation, saying, “I never fully put the club down behind it. I don’t think anything of it.”
“When the cameras are on you, they’re going to find anything. And I think you saw that in Bryson’s case. It happened to me at the U.S. Open, it happened to me at Bay Hill,” he added. “It’s happened to a lot of guys where they can see stuff that maybe looks like something that maybe it’s not. That lie was never bad. It was more just judging what it was. By no means did I take a bad lie and make it really good. People can think what they want. I know I didn’t do anything that was costing the integrity of the field. That’s all I’ve got to say about that.”
Even so, as the 2026 season comes to an end, Clark is not taking the route some other athletes in his situation might choose – embracing becoming the villain. Instead, Clark appears eager to embark on his own version of a redemption tour, one great round of golf at a time.
In a sport like golf, where grinders like Clark are revered, that sort of head-down, do-the-work attitude may be what ends up appealing to fans.
“I’d say the No. 1 thing is resilience,” Clark told CNN Sports’ Patrick Snell when asked what clicked for him this year. “Obviously, ’25 was a tough year. I had to deal with a lot and I felt like I got through it the best that I could. And then I bounced back.
“I think one of the greatest things you can do in life and in sport is to – when you get knocked down, how do you handle it? And it wasn’t easy, but I handled it the best I could, and I’ve been very blessed that I have a great team that helped me get back to where the point I am now, and now I feel like I’m set up to continue to have success the rest of this year, but also in the future years.”
That work is mostly being done quietly now. The few fans following Clark around in the baking heat of the Atlanta afternoon on Wednesday paled in comparison to the flock strolling alongside world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler a few holes ahead.
As he practiced with fellow pros Robert MacIntyre and Matt Fitzpatrick, Clark worked his way around the course, testing putts to different hole locations and hitting shot after shot out of East Lake’s white sand bunkers. He signed a few autographs, hit a bunch of putts and went through an otherwise workmanlike practice round.
In his interview with CNN Sports, he pointed to a new swing coach and a new putter as key factors in his resurgence this year.
“It’s always the chicken or the egg. Is it mental (issues) that led to bad physical, or physical to bad?” he told Snell.
“And I kind of chalk it up as more physical. And after making those two changes, I started seeing good golf, which then led to more confidence, which then led to winning, which led to more great golf and now we’re here.”
It was a sign of what Clark believes will sustain his success – and perhaps convert a few skeptics along the way.
“It’s a validation of knowing that all the hard work I put in is paying off,” he said.
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