Wyndham Clark won the U.S. Open on Sunday. He did so at Shinnecock Hills. His win was just the ninth ever, the first in over a decade, where someone went wire-to-wire without any ties. Again… at the U.S. Open.

What’s more is that Clark has won the national championship before. He is now a two-time U.S. Open winner and won his two titles within a four-year span. Everything about every word that I have said here so far is undeniably impressive.

Unfortunately, Wyndham Clark is not exactly the most popular player on the PGA Tour. That was, also unfortunately, a big part of his victory on Sunday.

You don’t have to be mad about this

Let’s start right now and say this: You can feel any way you want to.

Be mad that Wyndham Clark won the U.S. Open again. Tweet about it. Maybe you were on the grounds at Shinnecock and among those voicing your displeasure for him while trying to manifest Literally Anyone Else winning the tournament.

My objective here isn’t to tell anyone how to behave because I don’t think that makes sense to do. Goodness gracious though… Wyndham Clark won the U.S. Open! And people are hellbent on belittling it as much as possible.

If you are new around here then you may not know that Wyndham, upon not performing well, damaged lockers at last year’s U.S. Open at Oakmont. In the now year that has passed I have never seen anybody justify this in any capacity. It is hard to get universal agreement on anything on the internet, but it seems that we have that here. Wyndham doing that was not cool. It was embarrassing. It was lame. Whatever.

Wyndham has also apologized for this many times over the last year. It was a constant talking point during NBC’s broadcast of the tournament. Once more, no one is justifying his behavior (or the club toss that he had at the PGA Championship in 2025 as well as the Oakmont incident) in any kind of way. No one is even telling you that you have to change your mind about how you feel about it all.

Is it not unfortunate though that Wyndham just conquered (arguably) golf’s most difficult test (for a second time in four years) and that people are holding his feet to the fire about this? That he fought off boos and negative comments throughout his championship-winning round on Sunday?

No part of me is trying to act like the Golf Police here, but if people are so concerned with the transgressions against the game that Wyndham committed… isn’t this public shame/discourse/criticism counter to the game’s principles, too? I’m not comparing anything. I’m just saying that this feels like an intense obession at this point.

Even if you want to have the passionate feelings about this, you are more than welcome to as noted. Clark winning a golf tournament isn’t exactly some magic twist of the universe that will force you to change your mind.

Maybe just… don’t put all of that intense energy out? All of the time? Because it is hardly doing anything positive?