Signature Scroll: This is Wyndham Clark’s U.S. Open to lose

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Did not see that coming …

A walk with Wyndham

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — As Saturday morning turned to afternoon and Wyndham Clark’s 3:45 p.m. tee time neared, it became clear that this tournament rested on one man’s mental strength. Shinnecock Hills wasn’t yielding low scores, and aside from Rory McIlroy’s brief front-nine charge, his competition was doing little to put any pressure on the lead.

So as Clark striped his drive down the first fairway, I left the media center ready to find out if he was ready to do this again. Clark’s four-shot lead was a heck of a cushion, I thought. It was also quite the burden. Clark entered this weekend with expectations he didn’t have in 2023, when he improbably closed out his first U.S. Open. He was the underdog then – the man nobody expected to outduel McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler and Rickie Fowler. No stories would have been written had he failed to emerge from that crop.

There certainly will be this time.

What I witnessed in an afternoon watching Wyndham Clark was one of the most impressive mental performances in recent championship memory.

Let’s start here: He didn’t hit it well. He missed left on the third and again at the sixth. He hit an inexplicable wedge on the eighth and hit poor irons at the 10th and 11th that put him in jail. He was in bunkers at the 13th and 15th. Watching any of these shots could make you believe he was vulnerable. Until, of course, he got up and down nearly every time.

You can call it unsustainable. You might believe it will catch up to him. It may not matter. That’s the luxury that comes with a six-stroke lead, which Clark takes into the final round. Scottie Scheffler, Sahith Theegala, Tom Kim and Sam Stevens are all six strokes behind.

I kept a keen eye on Clark’s temperament. Other than some scowls after a poor bunker shot at the eighth, he remained as level-headed as one could reasonably expect. Even after three-putting the first, he executed two difficult lag putts at the second and third. He waved and joked with friends along the rope line heading to the fourth tee. A fan asked if he knew his grandpa. Clark said yes and smiled. I’m not sure he actually did. He found his girlfriend in the crowd on the way to the fifth tee and kissed her. He remained so focused that a marshal had to call him off his sixth tee shot because Clark didn’t realize the fairway hadn’t cleared.

Clark’s mental strength has been the story through his successes and downfalls. He credited the work he did with sports psychologist Julie Elion for reviving his career three years ago, laying the groundwork for his first major championship. But a lack of mental strength in critical moments also led to his worst moments. First, at the PGA Championship, he threw his driver and broke an advertisement board. Then, at last year’s U.S. Open, he smashed a locker. Those lowlights lingered with him longer than the triumphs.

It’s why I expected to see some mental warts on Saturday and why his steady, even-par 70 resonated. Sunday will be a new beast. It will be the most pressurized round of golf in his life. Given what I saw on Saturday, I think he’s up for it.

Playing through

• 🖊️ Our on-site crew provided updates throughout the day. Go through it to catch up on Moving Day …
• 5️⃣ Who has the most at stake on Sunday? Clark is an obvious one, but I picked four other golfers who have a lot riding on the final 18 holes at Shinnecock …
• 💰 Who should you bet on Sunday? My colleague Will Gray takes you through the best bets …

Wu’ing in the wind

My day began with morbid curiosity on the first tee with the day’s first pairing, Jacob Bridgeman and Dylan Wu.

We’re used to the earliest tee times facing the easiest conditions during weekend major rounds. The first groups grab some momentum, shoot up the leaderboard and put pressure on the leaders just as the golf course gets difficult and pulls the field close together like an accordion.

The opposite was true on Saturday. Wu and Bridgeman teed off in the height of the wind gusts, roaring 40 mph straight into their face on the first tee. They were beginning a death march, bearing the brunt of the hardest conditions while already 11 strokes behind Clark.

It went how you would expect. Wu’s first tee ball ballooned in the wind, and when it settled into the fescue, it had traveled just 224 yards. “Dude, how far did that go?” Wu said, passing by me as he left the tee box. I didn’t have the heart to tell him, and I sure didn’t want to say anything after he five-putted the green and made quadruple bogey.

After bogeys at the second and third holes, Wu finally hit the fourth fairway. As he chased after his caddie ahead of him, Wu gleefully proclaimed, “I’m going to break 100 today!” When he later parred the hole, he fist pumped, laughed, then told the caddie to give his ball to a kid. That ball had seen some things and belonged somewhere on a shelf. Just not on his..

It was an invigorating start. I caught up with Wu after the round. He was positive, though there was a tinge of “what could have been” and jealousy about the calm conditions that set in later. Getting the worst of the wind felt a bit cruel, and the course felt “laughable” at times, though not in an unfair way, just in an “I can’t believe how crazy this all is” way.

“Some of the holes are just kind of impossible,” he said. “... I just thought it was very, very tough and that’s what you want in a U.S. Open.”

Amen, Dylan.

Parting shots

• ⌛ Saturday’s final hour felt critical to Scheffler’s career Grand Slam hopes. You get the sense he needed to sneak into that final pairing to have a chance. Stevens and Kim both had opportunities, but neither could convert. So we get a delicious final pairing of Clark and Scheffler. If there were one man I wouldn't want to protect a six-shot lead against, it would be the four-time major champion and world No. 1.
• 🤔 Right place, right time. I was standing at the steps of the Shinnecock clubhouse as Clark crested the hill to the ninth green. He had a lengthy two-putt to save par, and down the hill I could see Scheffler lining up his eagle putt at the 16th. It felt like a critical moment. Clark had just bogeyed the eighth and looked shaky. If Scheffler could send a jolt through the property, it seemed Clark could lose a bit of control. Instead, Scheffler missed, Clark calmly made par and then extended his lead on the back nine.
• 🔇 The crowd lacked juice on Saturday. I was consistently shocked at the dearth of fans filling the grandstands as Clark and Matt Fitzpatrick came through. Clark commented on it after the round. It was a weird scene. Here's hoping it's jam-packed on Sunday afternoon.
• 🫠 Hard to describe McIlroy’s round as anything other than a massive disappointment. He was 2-under par through the front nine and looked like Clark’s biggest challenger. It all fell apart on the back nine. He shot 40 and now tees off nearly two and a half hours later. Make that two days in a row of incredibly weird back nines for the six-time major winner.
• 👍 Good on Theegala. His career was trending upward before a neck injury derailed his entire 2025 season. Theegala has just one top-10 finish at a major. That's the next step.
• 🇺🇸 Schauffele is the best modern U.S. Open player. The only issue, is he's never won one. It's not looking likely this year, either. He seems destined for his seventh top-10 finish in nine trips.
• 🕰️ It only took 108 minutes of play and 68 total holes to record the first birdie of the day on Saturday. Caleb Surratt made birdie at the par-5 fifth to end the run.