Wyndham Clark doesn’t want to make the same mistake again.
Entering his Ryder Cup debut last fall, Clark had gone over a month without competing in a tournament. Most of his U.S. teammates had similar September schedules. And when Clark teed off in fourballs that Friday in Rome, he quickly found himself apologizing to teammate Max Homa, saying, “Sorry, I’m not tournament sharp right now.”
The Americans, of course, went on to lose convincingly.
“It was realistically four weeks, and then by the time you pegged it up to play, it was the fifth week, so it’s five weeks,” Clark explained. “I mean, I would never prepare for a big event where I had five weeks off between one tournament to the next. … I felt like a lot of us weren’t prepared.”
Fast forward to this week in Napa, California, where Clark was set to play the FedExCup Fall’s opener, the Procore Championship. He’s one of three U.S. Presidents Cup team members, along with Sahith Theegala and Max Homa, competing.
“100 percent, that’s why I’m here,” Clark said of using the Procore as a tune-up for the Presidents Cup, which begins Sept. 26 in Montreal.
On the flip side, Mac Hughes, Corey Conners and Min Woo Lee are playing Procore while Adam Scott, Ben An and Si Woo Kim will play the DPWT’s BMW PGA Championship in England the week prior to the Presidents Cup.
The Tour doesn’t have another event between Procore and the Presidents Cup, but moving forward, Clark plans on competing more in the leadup to Ryder and Presidents cups should he make more teams.
“This year for Presidents Cup it’s less time, but I didn’t want to do that again,” Clark said. “So, if it’s something that I do myself or hopefully Team USA kind of makes it mandatory that everyone does it, I think we should all play before. I know we have such a grueling schedule and we all just played the Tour Championship, but if we can just do – it’s just one more week to play and to keep us sharp so that we can win, I think it’s worth it.”