SCOTTSDALE – A putter changed sparked the best round of Wyndham Clark’s fledgling PGA Tour career as he fired a bogey-free 10-under 61 to grab a two-stroke lead after the opening round of the Waste Management Phoenix Open.
Clark, 26, ranked as one of the best putters on the PGA Tour last season – No. 8 in Strokes Gained: Putting – but this season his putter has been less friend than foe (No. 107 SGP). So, after missing his last three cuts and spending most of his life using a blade putter, he opted to shake it up with a PXG Gunboat Gen2 mallet model and needed just 23 putts (+4.227 SGP) in coming just one shot shy of the TPC Scottsdale tournament record.
“I just gave myself a lot of looks and the putter was hot,” Clark said.
Starting on the back nine, Clark rolled in a 21-foot birdie putt at 12 to get the party started and continued the birdie barrage on the two pars 5 – Nos. 13 and 15 – before sticking it to 8 feet at 16 and draining an 11 footer at 17 to card 30 on his opening nine.
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Clark kept the pedal down with birdies on the first three holes on his second nine to get to 8 under for the day. He said he wasn’t even aware how he was doing until he looked at a leaderboard.
“I saw Billy Horschel was (8 under) too, and I said, ‘Man, he’s going to rain on my parade.’ So, kind of to myself I said, ‘All right, let’s go get past him,’ ” Clark said.
At the 191-yard par-3 seventh, Clark was trying to hit safely to 20 feet and pulled it. Pulled it tight into birdie range.
“I hit it to 3 feet,” Clark said. “It’s one of those rounds where everything’s going right.”
One hole later, he finessed a 9-iron from 170 yards to within 11 feet of the back-right hole location and rammed in his 10th birdie of the round. Horschel was the only player in the 132-man field to putt better statistically than Clark. Horschel made nearly 196 feet of putts, a career best, including two putts of more than 40 feet en route to posting 8-under 63.
“I’m a really good putter and then when I’m starting to roll putts from 25-plus feet in, it’s an added bonus and that’s what I did well today,” Horschel said.
Due to darkness, Seung-Yul Noh did not complete his round. He will return at 8 a.m. Friday to finish his last hole. Defending champion Rickie Fowler bogeyed five of his first nine holes en route to a 3-over 74, while World No. 3 Jon Rahm, who can reach World No. 1 for the first time in his career with a victory, opened with 67.
About the only complaint Clark could have with his new mallet putter was leaving the 26-foot birdie putt to tie the course record short. Otherwise the putter switch is off to a magical start. Or was it something else he changed with his putter?
“We tried something new,” Clark’s caddie, John Ellis, said. “No putter head cover. Maybe we’ll have to stick with that.”
