How Should You Feel About Wyndham Clark?

That is probably reductive, but I believe the three primary reasons we root for individual athletes are as follows …

• Greatness
• Charisma
• Relatability

Scottie is great, which makes him easy to root for. Watching history is fun. That isn’t to say that all people root for all players who excel in one of these categories. Some people don’t like Scottie even though he’s great, and that’s OK. It’s only to say that most people find rooting for guys like Scottie (or Brooks or Spieth) mostly easy to do.

The second reason we root for individual athletes is a little more complex, but it revolves around charisma. Guys with swagger. Guys who just seem … cool (even if they’re still just golf nerds). Think Ludvig, Adam Scott, Tiger, people like that.

Again, not always for everyone, but this category mostly captures most people.

The last reason is relatability. I think of this a bit differently than an “oh I could hit that shot” type of relatability. Almost nothing these guys do can be done by mere mortals. I think of it more like “that guy seems extremely down to earth” or “I can identify with the struggles that guy is going through.”

Think Rickie Fowler, Harry Higgs, Max Homa, Sahith Theegala, Russ Henley or Tommy Fleetwood. Guys who just seem … nice. Guys who get their hearts broken. Guys you really feel for.

Not everyone falls into just one category. The legends encompass at least two, if not three. Phil was one of those. All three categories. Great, charismatic and relatable. Rory has all three. All-time great at golf, seems cooler than he probably is and (somehow?) also relatable, probably more for his heartbreaks than for his niceness (at least to the general public).

Wyndham actually has bits and pieces of all three, which means that, on paper, he should be someone people love to root for. But buddy, I can assure you — at least this week at this major championship — there are very few people rooting for Wyndham Clark. If that’s not apparent already, it will be when he steps to the tee on Sunday with the No. 1 player in the world.

I have been thinking about why that is the case, and I think my conclusion is as follows.

People — specifically golf fans in this instance — are not stupid. They are actually very smart. And so if they sniff any inauthenticity in any of these three categories, they rebel. They push back. They go the other way and turn you inside out into a villain.

Wyndham’s problem is that even though he has bits and pieces of all three categories that make a player easy to root for, all three can feel counterfeit at times.

Is he great at golf? He can be great. But the most famous shot he’s ever hit is a big right miss that people now associate with him, which led to the perception of a crowning for the ages. People think he got away with one at LACC. Whether that’s true or not doesn’t really matter because that is how people remember it.

Get ready for a lot of drives going right right right right.

Is he charismatic? He can be charismatic. Wearing the U.S. hockey jersey in Canada is evidence of that. But when he destroys a sign at the PGA Championship and a locker at the U.S. Open, that particular charisma can feel like it’s all for show.

Is he relatable? He can be relatable. My interactions with him have always been good. I did a sit-down interview with him for TGL one time in which he was excellent. Great at talking ball. Willing to open up a bit. I talked to another media member on Saturday who did a different sit down and said he was engaged and just flat out awesome.

But when some of the dumb or questionable things he does — the list is comprehensive — don’t match up with what he says he’s about over and over again, man, there is nothing easier to sniff out.

On Friday, after Round 2, Wyndham said “that’s not who I am” about what has become the most infamous of his transgressions last year at Oakmont.

But what’s the quote from Maya Angelou?

This quote leaves little room for grace, which I have a problem with. But it does get at the fact that people don’t like to be tricked and that public figures are constantly disclosing who they are in various ways if you pay close enough attention.

For me, it’s not just the Oakmont locker thing with Wyndham. Not even close. Again, read the lengthy list Joel Beall wrote down here. Some of them I even forgot about.

When you stack up all of those prior transgressions and weigh them against who Wyndham Clark claims to be — “I really feel like I can show people that I'm fun and outgoing, I'm fierce, competitive, love the game, respect the game, and I just had a bad moment …” — you are left with (at best!) a complicated legacy and at worst someone who seems like he is willfully trying to pull one over on the golf public.

I will say this: I think if Wyndham, in a moment of self-awareness, had said something at any time over the last year like, “You know what, that actually is who I am. I struggle with anger, and it’s something I’m working on on a daily basis. I’m immature. I’m not perfect, and I’m going to mess up, but I see it, acknowledge and take ownership in it,” well, I think that would go such a long way in winning people over because it would be the most relatable thing in the world. It would also — unlike almost everything else he’s ever done — display some modicum of self-awareness.

I believe the reason people don’t like Wyndham Clark is because he seems to think he is someone that he has repeatedly shown us he is not.

All of this is messy, of course. Fandom usually is. I think rooting for guys for the first two reasons is usually somewhat safe. You aren’t going to get burned too often there. Maybe sometimes, but not as often. Rooting for guys for the third reason is trickier because, well, [gestures at Phil] we never really know someone, even if our parasocial relational world makes it feel like we do.

I don’t really think Wyndham is trying to pull one over on people. That takes a special kind of sociopath. What I do think is that he doesn’t really know himself, his true self. We have all either been around that person or been that person ourselves.

It is not an easy person to root for.

You should not feel obligated to root one way or another on Sunday when Wyndham joins Bryson, Brooks, Tiger and Retief as the only multiple-time U.S. Open winners this century.

Me? I don’t really know how I’ll feel. It certainly doesn’t thrill me because I don’t find him to neatly fit into any of the categories above. But I’m not angry about it either because I do think grace abounds, and Wyndham does (at times) seem to put forth some effort to change and evolve (there are others, other multiple-time U.S. Open champions this century, who do not).

Would I love it if Scottie sizzled and went out in something stupid before stealing the trophy and completing the slam? I would. I think Scottie is all-time great, and while I don’t always find him to be charismatic, I do think — going back to his Open Championship monologue at Portrush a year ago — that he is relatable.

But if when Wyndham wins, I won’t feel anything like I do when it’s Spieth or Rory. That’s OK. I think I’ve made my peace with it.

For one, having sports villains is good. I don’t know that Wyndham qualifies because I don’t believe he thinks of himself like that or is willing to play the role like Reed does or Brooks (playfully) does. But more so, I’ve made peace because I think him winning here is a nice reminder that fandom is conflicted because individual people can be conflicted.

That’s a good thing. It shouldn’t always be simple. It should make us think and wish and hope and get angry and wallow a bit. That means it still means something.

Both to us and to the complicated people that we’re cheering for.

But just to be safe…

Thank you for reading and participating in all of this. Thank you for supporting us so that we can do things like attend the U.S. Open at Shinnecock and try to write about it and draw it with as much feeling and joy as that place and this tournament both engender.