SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — You’re tempted to say, “Enough already about that sorry episode from last year, Wyndham Clark and the Bashed Oakmont Locker.” Hear that loud and clear. Let me say my piece and get out.
Clark, the 2023 U.S. Open winner, did his bashing after missing the cut at last year’s U.S. Open. His week was done. Had he bashed the locker while still in the tourney, could you get a one shot or even two-shot penalty for violating the game’s Code of Conduct standards, for something off the course? It would be up to each tournament’s rules-and-competition committee. There is no set standard. (I’d say yes.)
At the Masters in April, a different situation. Sergio Garcia went ballistic with his driver on the pristine turf of the second tee in the fourth round. A club official gave him a warning and a talking to. Had the club given him a one-shot penalty, I would have been fine with that. He degraded the course for the rest of the field. He showed a lack of discipline. He acted like a spoiled brat at a club where, as a former Masters winner, he’s an honorary member. Grow up, brother. You’re 46.
Part of the standard, when considering a player’s conduct, is how the conduct impacts others. Joaquin Niemann got a two-shot Code of Conduct penalty for throwing a club in the second round of the U.S. Open here. Fitting. Not only is it a bad look, a thrown club also could be dangerous; it’s not like you can really control where they go. In my own experience, they go way more left than you might imagine. Mine land listlessly in the rough. A touring pro’s toss might make a beeline for a spectator.
How about this one? A player berates a volunteer marshal when the marshal cannot find the player’s ball. Give the player a shot, and a lecture: Show some class, dude.
That’s really what it comes down to. Show come class. Last year at Oakmont, a prominent USGA official, after hearing about how Clark beat up a defenseless and ancient Oakmont locker, said, “I’d ban him from next year’s Open.” I get it. You’re playing at one of the most spectacular golf clubs in the world as a guest, and that’s your parting act? That’s how offended this official was, and he was not alone. It seemed to take a long while for Clark to get his public apology and private restitution right, but he did. So, truly, let’s move on from it. None of us would want to remembered forever for our worst day in the office, or at home for that matter.
I find this one, this rules incident involving Clark, to be far more troubling than the locker bashing. I know I’m beating a long-dead horse here. I just find it hard to let this one go, it was (to my eye) so egregious.
Bay Hill, March 2024, third round, 18th hole, cameras all over him. Clark is in the third-to-last group, playing with Scottie Scheffler. He hits his tee shot in the juicy right rough, yards from the lake there. His ball settles deep in it. He has, and this is a term of the art, nothing. One play: hack it out.
But Clark went in there with the heavy flange of a wedge, shoving it behind the ball four or more times. (The rule book says you can touch that grass “lightly” — the rules want to make sure you are not improving your lie.) While doing so, the ball — to Brandel Chamblee, to me, likely others — seemed to move. Your ball can’t move when you’re addressing it. If it does, it’s a shot and the ball goes back to where it was. That’s why Jack Nicklaus hovered — hovering is not addressing. Tour rules officials conferred and decided not to give Clark a penalty. I was not the only person flabbergasted by that.
“The ball clearly moved,” Chamblee said in the Golf Channel broadcast that day. “He clearly didn’t ground his club lightly. You begin to wonder: What does a Tour player have to do to get a penalty?”
Amen, Brandel.
A few weeks later, at the Masters, I asked Clark about what happened at Bay Hill. This is what he said:
“When we finished that round, we had no idea why the officials were in there. And obviously, when you watch the tape, maybe it doesn’t look good. I mean, the one thing in my defense is I’m setting the club down, I feel like I have the right and freedom to be able to set the club down where I want. I wasn’t trying to improve my lie by any means.
“But it’s definitely something I talked about with my caddie. And he’s like, ‘Hey, the cameras are on us more.’ Not that I was doing anything wrong prior to that when the cameras weren’t on us, but every little thing we do is magnified when the cameras are on you.
“So I maybe now have to be a little more conscious of not putting the club down as much. You just have to really watch what you do. You’re under the microscope. And it was unfortunate that it maybe looked poor on camera. But I was laying up, regardless, and I still laid up. So I didn’t think I enhanced the lie by any means.
“I think that was a one-off, unique experience. But I definitely will, in my mind, go, ‘Okay, I don’t want to have any question that I’m trying to do anything that’s like cheating, or anything illegal.’ So I will be definitely more aware of it.
“But I’ve been doing what I did for years and no one’s ever called me out on it. So I don’t know if I’m necessarily going to change it. I might be just more aware and make sure that the optics also don’t look like I’m doing something wrong.”
Lot of words.
When Tiger Woods would hit something snipey and drop an f-bomb, it didn’t bother me in part because it didn’t really have any impact on the play by other players. It really just showed how tightly wound he was. I’m not condoning it. I just don’t think it’s that bad. When you beat up a tee marker or the teeing ground, that’s something else. When you push the rule book to favor you at the expense of the rest of the field, that’s something else. Then you are violating everything the game actually stands for. You’re putting your needs above the rights of others. Golf’s not a place to be grabby, self-absorbed, inconsiderate. Golf preaches consideration.
I know I’ve cited this a hundred times, but these are some of the best golf sentences ever written and it’s too bad they are no longer in the rule book as they once were, right up through 2018:
“Golf is played, for the most part, without the supervision of a referee or umpire. The game relies on the integrity of the individual to show consideration for others and to abide by the rules of the game. All players should conduct themselves in a disciplined manner, demonstrating courtesy and sportsmanship at all times, irrespective of how competitive they may be. This is the spirit of the game of golf.”
No reason to let Wyndham Clark’s Oakmont locker thing from 12 months ago influence your rooting interest this weekend at this 126th U.S. Open, here at Shinnecock Hills. The Bay Hill thing? You have your opinion and I have mine.
I do think if Clark really absorbed the beauty of that old USGA rule book preamble, he would have come in on that Saturday afternoon at Bay Hill, watched the tape and said, Man, that looks bad, the shoving, the movement, all of it. Is that one shot or two?
Four. Two for improving your lie. One for playing from the wrong place. One for not moving it back.
OK then.
Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com
