Roller-Coaster Ride

After 3 PGA Tour wins in 9 months, Denver native Wyndham Clark has gone 2 years without a victory and has dropped out of the top 50 in the world rankings; But ‘home game’ at Phoenix Open awaits this week

By Gary Baines – 2/4/2026

It’s a notable week on the PGA Tour for Wyndham Clark in at least a few respects:

— At the spectacle that is the WM Phoenix Open, Clark is one of five Scottsdale residents in the field for the event at TPC Scottsdale, where round 1 begins Thursday (Feb. 5). Clark, a Denver native and Valor Christian High School alum, Clark also spends quite a bit of time in Colorado as he’s an honorary member at Cherry Hills Country Club as of last year and is a 2024 inductee of the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame.

— The first week of February marks the two-year anniversary since his last victory on the PGA Tour. On Feb. 3, 2024, Clark won the weather-shortened AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, having shot a course-record 12-under-par 60 in what became the final round at Pebble Beach Golf Links. 

While that was Clark’s third PGA Tour win in the course of just nine months, he’s now gone 24 months without adding to his victory total.

— This week, Clark (54th) fell out of the top 50 in the Official World Golf Rankings for the first time since the start of May in 2023. Actually, Clark had quite a run in the top 10 in the rankings — continuously from late summer 2023 to April 2025. He reached as high as No. 3 after placing third in the RBC Heritage in 2024.

Clark, now 32, has had quite a roller-coaster ride over the last three years. As of this time of year in 2023, he was ranked outside of the top 150. But, thanks to victories in the Wells Fargo Championship and the U.S. Open in the late spring of ’23, he cracked the top 10 for the first time in July of that year.

In the 19 months starting with a 10th-place showing in the 2023 WM Phoenix Open, Clark recorded a very impressive 15 top-10 finishes on the PGA Tour. Especially noteworthy was the stretch from mid-April 2023 to mid-April 2024 when he recorded eight top-3 showings. He won three times (including a U.S. Open), placed second twice (including at the Players Championship where a 180-degree lip-out kept him from forcing a playoff) and third three times.

It’s little wonder why Clark told ColoradoGolf.org in early 2024 that “I would love to climb the world rankings. I’ve always had aspirations to try to be the best player in the world.  

“… I think my game matches up with anyone in the world,” he added then. “I would say the one thing I see that maybe someone like Scottie Scheffler or Jon Rahm or Rory McIlroy do that maybe is better than me is that they’re just consistent. Their bad weeks are 15th or 12th (place). They’re constantly getting top-10s. That would be the one thing that I think I can get better at is where I’m a little more consistently at the top. It took me five years to learn how to win. Now I know how to win. But I’m playing with the best players in the world and I’ve beaten the best players in the world. I look at their games and feel like I can do everything they can do. They just maybe do it more consistently.”

But after Clark’s remarkable run that concluded with a top 10 in the 2024 Tour Championship, he’s struggled to maintain that stellar level.

In the last 17 months (September 2024-now), Clark has posted just two top-10s in 27 official PGA Tour events — a fourth in the 2025 British Open and fifth at the 2025 Texas Children’s Houston Open. And it certainly didn’t help that two temper-related incidents involving Clark took place at major championships in 2025, drawing considerable attention.

Asked in December what letter grade he would give his 2025 season, Clark said, “An F that became an F-plus. It just was a bad year. A lot of crap happened and then I kind of salvaged it at the end. But the good thing is we’ve got next year.”

In the offseason, as Clark noted in the fall, he was working with a swing coach for the first time in a few years, Cherry Hills Country Club PGA director of instruction Pat Coyner.

So far this year, Clark has placed 13th at the American Express — after being in contention through three rounds — and 65th at the Farmers Insurance Open.

What part of Clark’s game has been problematic, at least compared to 2-3 years ago?

While Clark’s putting is still decent or better by PGA Tour standards — he ranked 66th in Strokes Gained: Putting last year and is 55th so far in 2026 — he hasn’t been up to his standards of the previous two seasons (33rd in 2022-23 and 19th in 2024). During the 60 he shot at Pebble Beach in 2024, Clark sank more than 215 feet worth of putts — including those from just off the green, which don’t count toward his official total — and drained an amazing five putts of more than 24 feet.

But tee-to-green has seen more of a drop-off compared to Clark’s two best seasons, with rankings of 92nd (2025) and 104th (2026) in that Strokes Gained category compared to 28th (2022-23) and 39th (2024) earlier.

Clark said in December that his offseason focus was primarily on improving his ball-striking.

“Off the tee I was terrible and my iron play wasn’t as good (in 2025),” he said.”You hit it bad off the tee, (and it) makes it harder to hit it into the green better. … Really we’re just trying to get back to ’23, how I was swinging in ’23.”

It’s still very early in the 2026 season, so how all this plays out remains to be seen.

“As I’ve progressed in the offseason, both changing a little bit of equipment, working with a new coach, and dialing in the putter, my game’s starting to feel really good,” Clark said on Jan. 24.

Rebuilding the form of two and three years ago — results-wise — won’t be easy. But a “home game” this week in Scottsdale might be a good place to start. In seven previous appearances at the Phoenix Open, he’s made five cuts, with his 10th-place showing in 2023 being his best finish.

For the Phoenix Open tee times, CLICK HERE.