Golf

Wyndham Clark enters the zone to take a comfortable lead at the Players Championship

Rory McIlroy with an indifferent start to his second round but Shane Lowry and Séamus Power make strong bids to make the cut

Wyndham Clark of the United States lines up a putt on the 12th green during the second round of The Players Championship. Photograph: Kevin C Cox/Getty Images

Philip Reid
Fri Mar 15 2024 - 19:58

The zone, it’s where they all want to be. You can prepare as best you can but finding it is no guarantee. It’s very rarely found, if truth be known. Wyndham Clark, though, managed to find that magical space on the homeward stretch of his second round in the 50th anniversary of The Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass.

Clark, the world number five and reigning US Open champion, reached the turn after an ordinary enough opening nine that hinted little of the fireworks to come only to walk into the zone with a run of four straight birdies – from the first to the fourth, having started his round on the 10th – and, when it came to signing his card, a homeward 30 to go with his front 35 gave him back-to-back 65s for a midway total of 14-under-par 130.

That 36-holes total of 130 tied his career low opening midway score on the PGA Tour and marked the second lowest opening 36-holes score in the history of the Players, bettered only by Webb Simpson in 2018 and Jason Day in 2016 as both went on to lift the tour’s flagship title.

Although it was hard for anyone to match the exploits of Clark in a second round again played in ideal scoring conditions of receptive greens and little or no wind, Shane Lowry made a good fist of getting into a similar scoring mood late on as the Offaly man escaped from flirting with the cut-line to claim three birdies in his closing five holes for a 70 to add to his opening 71 for three-under-par 141 and move comfortably into the weekend.

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Lowry joined Séamus Power on that 141 mark, after the Waterford player – getting back to his old self after a difficult time fighting a hip injury which first manifested during last July’s Scottish Open – carded a second round 69.

World number one Scottie Scheffler, the defending champion, added a 67 for a midway total of 136 to lie six adrift of Clark in his bid to become the first player to win the championship in back-to-back years. But news of a neck injury will lead to worry heading into that weekend chase.

For Clark, who claimed his breakthrough major when winning the US Open at Los Angeles Country Club last year, and who shot a closing round 60 earlier this year to win the AT&T Pebble Beach pro-am, there was a wonderful rhythm to his back nine exploits.

“It’s pretty cool. More than anything I’m super excited that I kind of had a ho-hum front nine and then turned and really got into a nice zone, felt really good on the greens and shot an awesome number,” said Clark.

At 30 years of age, Clark has moved onto a new level since claiming his breakthrough tour win in the Wells Fargo last May. Now, with three career wins on the PGA Tour – Wells Fargo, the US Open and Pebble Beach – and a move into the top-five in the world rankings, there is a search for week-to-week consistency with an obvious role model to emulate:

“I would like to play great every week. I really looked at how Scottie (Scheffler) has been playing this year and last year and I use him as someone to try to keep up with, and he plays good every week. So my thing is just try to be consistent and with our schedule now too you kind of only play big events, so that’s part of it as well,” explained Clark, whose dramatic rise in world stature is demonstrated by the fact he will only make his Masters debut at Augusta next month.

By then, who knows, he could be going there as The Players and US Open champion.

Clark’s second round homeward run of six birdies and three pars provided yet another indication of how comfortable he can be in his own skin, and his decision not to tinker with swing or equipment has also benefited him.

As he put it, “I think some guys maybe change too much and I’ve been a victim of that, where you have one bad week and instantly you think you got to change everything. I’ve learned a lot in these five years [on tour] that it’s better to just kind of keep your clubs consistent, your practice consistent, everything consistent, and then you produce consistent golf.”

Clark – with a $4.5 million purse to the winner at Sawgrass – is headed into the weekend as the player to catch but aware of the quality of pursuers, not least Scheffler who also has the momentum of a win in the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill last week to fuel his defence.

Thing is, Scheffler also has a neck issue to deal with heading into the weekend after getting some on-course and post-round treatment.

Ireland's Shane Lowry. Photograph: Kevin C Cox/Getty Images

“I hit a shot on my second hole today and I felt a little something in my neck, and then I tried to hit my tee shot on 12, and that’s when I could barely get the club back. So I got some treatment, maybe it loosened up a tiny bit, but most of the day I was pretty much labouring to get the club somehow away from me,” explained Scheffler.

Clark’s back-to-back 65s gave him a five strokes clubhouse lead over reinvigorated Matt Fitzpatrick and Maverick McNealy (on 135), while Germany’s Matti Schmid – one of those beneficiaries of the DP World Tour’s awarding of PGA Tour cards through the season’s Race to Dubai – joined Scheffler (on 136).

Rory McIlroy, meanwhile, failed to kickstart any charge in the early stages of his second round which featured an inconsistent scorecard of bogey-birdie-bogey-birdie-birdie-bogey for his opening six holes.

Philip Reid

Philip Reid

Philip Reid is Golf Correspondent of The Irish Times

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