Wyndham Clark

A month after winning his first PGA Tour title at the 134th attempt Clark became golf’s newest major champion by pushing world No 3 Rory McIlroy and No 1 Scottie Scheffler into second and third place respectively at the recent US Open.

The 29-year-old was ranked 80th prior to his four-stroke success at the Wells Fargo Championship, but on leaving Los Angeles he had made it to 13th. A Ryder Cup debut seems likely to follow.

Clark played his first Open Championship in 2022 thanks to a tie for seventh at the RBC Canadian Open. Two spots were up for grabs as part of The Open Qualifying Series, but top six Rory McIlroy, Tony Finau, Justin Thomas, Sam Burns, Justin Rose and Corey Conners already had places at St Andrews.

Clark became exempt for Hoylake by being among the game’s top 50 at the end of May, although failing that he could have taken the first of three Qualifying Series places on offer at the Wells Fargo event.

The nearest he had come to winning before that was the 2020 Bermuda Championship, where a closing 65 left him tied with Brian Gay, who birdied the last hole and then did it again when they went into sudden death.

Was a team-mate of Bryson DeChambeau in the 2014 Palmer Cup match at Walton Heath between the top college players of the United States and Europe, whose line-up included Jon Rahm. They faced each other in the concluding singles with Rahm coming out on top 4&3.