Updated June 22, 2026, 7:53 p.m. ET
Wyndham Clark won the 126th U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills, becoming a two-time champion.Clark overcame a hostile crowd and a shrinking lead to win by one stroke.The victory comes a year after Clark faced backlash for damaging a locker at the U.S. Open at Oakmont.Clark has been working with a mental coach and a new swing coach to improve his game and attitude.
SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. – When Wyndham Clark first met mental coach Julie Elion, he was skeptical that working with a coach to help him improve his thoughts would help him win a tournament. “You guys all say the same things,” he said when they first met. “Nothing works.”
Clark needed Elion like never before on Sunday at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club for the final round of the 126th U.S. Open as he faced not only the course but a crowd that rooted openly against him. That night, he said he had the craziest dream of his life. Then he woke up with a pit in his stomach and endured a nightmare as his 54-hole lead shrank to as little as one before the front nine was over. He was in danger of becoming the first 54-hole leader in U.S. Open history to blow a six-stroke lead.
On a sunny, windswept day over the Scottish links-style mostly treeless layout with its humps and bumps and swales, Clark was the golfer that the fans loved to hate.
More: Police ejecting fans from U.S. Open for heckling Wyndham Clark at Shinnecock
“We knew it was going to come,” and they strategized for “the haters,” said Elion, but as she later admitted, “I’ve seen a lot of bad behavior over the years but never like this.”
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And yet somehow, Clark made just enough clutch putts to shoot three-over 73 and weather the storm to become the first wire-to-wire U.S. Open champion since Martin Kaymer in 2014 and a two-time winner of his national championship.
“Being in the arena is not for everybody, and I think it shows a lot about Wyndham, how he handled not only this golf course but I think the crowd today as well and is a well-deserving champion,” said world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, who played in the last pairing with Clark.
Scheffler’s putter stayed cold and he shot a final-round 71 in his pursuit of completing the career Grand Slam and finished T-4. Sam Burns settled for runner-up after making a valiant charge, shooting 67 for a 72-hole total of 277.
What a difference a year makes for Clark, who left the U.S. Open at Oakmont in Pittsburgh a broken man after missing the 36-hole cut and destroying a locker in a fit of rage in the venerable clubhouse that the membership had been kind enough to let him use for the week.
Clark’s season of turmoil was framed around two incidents where his childish behavior went viral: the other being when he lost control at the PGA Championship, throwing a club in anger following a wild tee shot. He snapped the clubhead and nearly struck a volunteer with the club. It all reached a head when, shortly after apologizing for his behavior at the PGA and promising he would do better, he was caught on camera doing something even more inexcusable at Oakmont. It was one of those life lessons he probably needed, but no one ever wants to look in the mirror and take responsibility for such actions. When the photo of the kicked-in locker went viral, Clark went underground.
“It was a really tough two, three days for me. I was in a dark place, didn’t really go outside much,” he said. “At that moment I just felt a lot of my career, world ranking, reputation, everything just dwindling. That’s a terrible feeling. Yeah, I would say in that moment I definitely didn’t think I’d be here this year doing this.”
The consequences of his actions last year are still being felt. In a letter sent to Oakmont membership shortly after the incident, club president John Lynch said, “Reinstatement would be contingent upon Mr. Clark fulfilling a number of specific conditions, including full repayment for damages, a meaningful contribution to a charity of the Board’s choosing, and the successful completion of counseling and/or anger management sessions.”
More: Exclusive: Wyndham Clark made amends at Oakmont; club created new trophy with locker mesh
Last week, rumors were flying that Clark still hadn’t satisfied the requirements laid out by the club but Bob Ford, the longtime Oakmont pro who remains in an emeritus role, told Golfweek, “You may have heard a lot of stories. I will give you the facts. “Wyndham has done everything that was asked of him by both the USGA and Oakmont together. The lockers are fixed and he did pay for them.”
Clark has been criticized in some corners for not making a full apology, or apologizing quickly enough. He acknowledged that the social media backlash and harm to his reputation were self-inflicted, and he’s attempting to make reparations and change his ways.
“What happened at last year’s U.S. Open was the kick in the face to say, ‘Hey, wake up, let’s get back to who I am,'” he said. “I screwed up. I learned a lot and it got me back to who Wyndham Clark is.”
Clark described himself as “fun and outgoing, I’m fierce, competitive, love the game, respect the game, and I just had a bad moment … I’m just happy I’m here on the other side of things.”
With a new girlfriend, a new caddie, a new swing coach and a new putter, Clark has a new attitude. The one constant has been Elion, who has trained Clark to block out the negative voices and “the haters.” On Saturday, she sent Clark an Instagram message posted by Sahil Bloom, an inspirational writer and creator of curiosity-inducing content, to play with a surfer mentality.
“When a surfer gets up on a wave, they enjoy the present moment, even though they know that the wave will eventually end,” read the philosophical tip. “They fully enjoy this wave, with the wisdom and awareness that there are always more waves coming.”
Improving one’s mental health isn’t a linear journey, Elion likes to say. With her help, Clark has to come to accept that the mental game is full of ebbs and flows. He was on top of the world after winning the 2023 U.S. Open, conceding to Elion, “This stuff really works.”
“If you think of it as climbing Everest, sometimes you go up, sometimes you have to go down to go back up,” he said.
His game started to ascend again not long after Cherry Hills Country Club in Denver awarded Clark an honorary membership last year. Clark conducted a junior clinic for the members and hit the shots while Pat Coyner, the club’s director of instruction and a PGA member, served as emcee.
Coyner, 53, studied Clark’s swing and detected it had become long at the top, leading to swinging past parallel. His lead wrist was extended or cupped. It led to an open face, a steep shaft and becoming narrow in his downswing, which meant he had to back out of it at impact and tilt away from the target at impact. That’s never a good thing for anyone but especially for a fader of the ball. Clark wound up battling a two-way miss. Clark, who had gone the past three seasons without a swing coach, was intrigued with this diagnosis and one day last fall he texted Coyner and asked him if he could help him rebuild his swing to become a champion again.
Clark still prefers his patented fade but the swing changes he’s made have allowed Clark to move it both ways now that his clubface is in a better position.
“His draws are some of the best irons he’s hit,” Coyner said.
The ballstriking came first and the putting followed. Clark switched into a Scottsdale TEC Ally Blue Onset, a white mallet, and has been red-hot ever since. He ranked fourth in Strokes Gained: Putting for the week and was at his most deadly on Saturday when he salvaged a series of par putts and hit the shot of the championship – a 275-yard cut 3-wood to 3 feet to set up eagle.
Last year, Clark conceded he struggled with self-doubt and even when he got into contention, he focused too much on the holes in his game.
“I didn’t really believe I could keep playing good just because I hadn’t seen it, versus now, regardless of where my game is at, I feel like good things are going to happen, and I can continue to play well,” he said.
Clark surged into the lead on Thursday evening after the frisky North Atlantic wind calmed down and he posted 6-under 64, the lowest score in the first round of a U.S. Open at Shinnecock. He drained a 33-foot birdie putt on 18 for a 1-under 69 on Friday and stretched the lead on Saturday with an even-par round thanks to one incredible par save after another and the shot of the championship – a cut 3-wood from 275 yards at the par-5 16th that stopped 3 feet from the hole for an eagle. Clark’s putting was shades of 2004 U.S. Open winner Retief Goosen, who famously one-putted 11 of Shinnecock’s treacherous and complex greens in the final day. Still, Goosen, who returned to the course for the first time since his glory day, credited the importance of his mental strength that day.
“Everybody on the driving range hits it 300 yards, but one guy shoots 64 and the other shoots 74,” Goosen said. “All the greatest players in the world have great minds.”
On Saturday night, despite building a commanding lead, Clark texted Elion a bunch of angry emojis and wrote that his lead should’ve been greater. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, here we go again,’ said Elion. “But that’s also what makes him great. He’s so competitive.”
In the final round, it all seemed to be slipping away as he made bogey on three of the first seven holes, getting “Shinnecocked” as his pitch was rejected by the slope of the green and returned near his feet, and failed to make a birdie until No. 10. With LIV Golf scooping up the majority of golf’s villains, Clark’s petulance became an easy target to become the Tour’s newest heel. It was hard to know for sure if the fans rooted against Clark because they didn’t like him as a person or because they wanted either a close contest or, more specifically, to see history in the form of Scottie Scheffler becoming just the seventh golfer in history to win the career Grand Slam — and on his 30th birthday, no less. It was probably a combination of both. They heckled him with “don’t choke, buddy,” and “get in the bunker.” But even in the run-up to the Open, Clark had been ridiculed for saying he was going to celebrate his previous victory last month at the CJ Cup Byron Nelson in Dallas with “some grape.” Then he trolled Canadian fans at the RBC Canadian Open wearing the sweater of Team USA’s Olympic hockey hero, Jack Hughes onto the tee at a hole nicknamed The Rink.
In the face of a hostile environment, Clark cheered for himself when he holed a 25-foot birdie putt at 16, the longest putt he’d made in the last 34 holes. “That was probably the loudest I’ve yelled for myself in golf,” Clark said.
He cracked jokes with his caddie, Dave Pelekoudas, every time they heard someone cheer for him. “I’d go, oh, there’s one person that likes me,” Clark said.
But there was at least one more supporter in his corner. What he didn’t know was that his father, Randall, who had introduced Wyndham to golf at a young age and had gone undergone heart surgery in 2024, caught a red-eye to see him win for the first. After Clark lagged a 62-foot putt to tap-in range to secure a 72-hole total of 4-under 276 and a stroke better than Burns, he joined Goosen and contemporaries Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka as two-time U.S. Open champions. Clark’s dad ran onto the green and surprised his son, who didn’t know he was there, wrapping him in a bear hug on Father’s Day.
Wyndham had found his next wave, and it was a big one. Let’s see how long he can ride this one.
Adam Schupak is a senior writer for Golfweek, covering the PGA Tour.