Wyndham Clark won the 2026 US Open by one shot on Sunday — and he did it against everything Shinnecock Hills and its crowd threw at him. Leading by six strokes from the first tee and winning by one at the final green, Clark spent an entire day battling not just the course but an openly hostile Long Island crowd that cheered his mistakes, jeered his putts, and serenaded his playing partner Scottie Scheffler while meeting Clark’s finest shots with polite silence or none at all.
When the final putt dropped — a 9-inch tap-in preceded by an immaculate 52-foot lag — Clark did not wait for an embrace from a crowd that was not particularly offering one. He erupted alone, his voice briefly the only sound carrying across Shinnecock’s expanse. Then he turned and said something that the crowd, begrudgingly beginning to warm to him, listened to: “New York didn’t love me. I love you guys. I get it, they root for Scottie. Grand Slams only happen a few times. He’s going to get it, he’s the best player in the world.” He paused. “But today is my day.”
A Day of Hostile Golf and Defiant Resilience
The crowd’s behaviour went beyond the typical Scheffler enthusiasm that has become a fixture at major championships. Fans shouted for Clark’s ball to find bunkers. They asked him to get nervous. They asked for harder wind when he stepped over his shots. When his ball ran off greens, they cheered for it to go further from the hole. On the 10th hole, Scheffler’s birdie drew a roar from the grandstands — then Clark matched it with a birdie of his own and was met with near-silence. On the 17th, he backed off an 8-foot par putt to jeers, then missed it to eruption.
“Man, they definitely didn’t want me to win,” Clark said afterward. He and his caddie David Pelekoudas had prepared for this going into the final round, spending considerable time discussing the atmosphere they knew was coming. Their solution was straightforward: every time the crowd cheered for Scheffler, they would try to imagine the cheer was for them. “Let’s keep this to ourselves and let’s get cocky and more confident,” Pelekoudas said of their private mindset through the round. When the rare individual fan cheered for Clark, he would joke with his caddie that there was “one person” on their side.
Scheffler himself noticed the crowd’s edge. “It can get a little too much when, you know, balls are kind of going off greens and you start hearing cheers,” Scheffler said. “That felt a bit much to me.” He finished four shots behind Clark, unable to find the birdie run the partisan crowd was hoping to fuel.
Redemption Without Calling It That
Clark won the 2023 US Open at Los Angeles Country Club as a relative unknown, holding off Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, and Rickie Fowler to claim his first major. That win raised questions about whether he was a one-off. In the time since, he has answered with his golf — but also created noise off the course. Last year, he damaged a locker room at Oakmont Country Club, prompting a ban from the club and widespread criticism. He has had visible on-course outbursts and thrown clubs in disgust. Much of Sunday’s crowd dynamic was, he acknowledged, a consequence of that history.
“Some of it is self deserved. I kind of brought it on myself. I did some things last year I really regret. I’m sorry,” Clark said. “At that moment, I just felt a lot of my career, world ranking, reputation, everything just dwindling.” He said he would not have believed, standing in that locker room at Oakmont, that he would be standing at Shinnecock Hills a year later as a two-time major champion.
What he displayed on Sunday did not require the redemption narrative to be impressive. Clark made nothing easy look easy and everything hard look manageable. Shinnecock’s sharp contours, winding putts, and punishing rough tested every part of his game and found it just strong enough. His father Randall, who flew in from Denver overnight as a surprise, put it plainly: “If you look up resilience in the dictionary, you see his name. He was a warrior. I’m just really proud of his resilience and his fight. He didn’t play his best, but he figured it out.”
Clark played the kind of “ugly golf” that wins majors rather than highlights — grinding through trouble, surviving bad lies, refusing to compound errors. When his tank was nearly empty on Sunday afternoon, his competitive instinct kept firing. “It was tough, but I’m proud of myself that I battled through,” he said. “I stood tough.”
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Frequently Asked Questions
A: Wyndham Clark won the 2026 US Open at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, winning by one shot over Scottie Scheffler.
A: Clark and his caddie David Pelekoudas prepared for the atmosphere before the round, deciding to treat every crowd cheer for Scheffler as if it were for them. Clark stayed focused on his process and met the heckling with levity throughout the day.
A: No. Clark won his first major at the 2023 US Open at Los Angeles Country Club, beating Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, and Rickie Fowler. Sunday’s win at Shinnecock Hills is his second US Open title.
A: Clark attributed part of the crowd’s hostility to a locker room incident at Oakmont Country Club in 2025, for which he was banned from the club and publicly criticised. He acknowledged on Sunday that some of the response was self-deserved.
A: Clark told the crowd: “New York didn’t love me. I love you guys. I get it, they root for Scottie. Grand Slams only happen a few times. He’s going to get it, he’s the best player in the world. But today is my day.”
