Wyndham Clark

When the game is no longer a break.

- Max Adler

THE SUMMER BEFORE my sophomore year in college, my mom was fighting breast cancer. I was a couple of shots off the lead in the Western Amateur when my aunt called. My parents weren’t going to tell me since I was playing so well, but my mom’s health had taken a bad turn. Withdrawing to fly home to Colorado was the best decision I ever made. She died 20 hours after I received that call. When I returned to Oklahoma State University that fall, I continued to play solid golf, tried to stay strong, but that spring the grief boiled over. It hit me that I couldn’t call my mom anymore. A life off the course became hard, and I figured, Why have an outlet that adds to my emotional frustration? So I took a medical hardship to redshirt and stopped competing.

I’VE HEARD THE STORY A THOUSAND TIMES. How my mom brought me to a driving range when I was 3, and after I finished one bucket, I wanted another. But I don’t remember that. My earliest vivid golf memory is making a hole-in-one when I was 6. The driver from 125 yards. It was on a family trip to the mountains, so the thin air must’ve helped. My dad and I had a bet going that he’d buy me a PlayStation if I made an eagle, and he paid up.

I’M LUCKY TO HAVE ATHLETIC GENES. My dad played some professional tennis, and my mom could throw a perfect spiral and beat us all in ping-pong. In every photograph, until she’s 16, she looks like a boy. But then she transformed into this beautiful woman and was Miss New Mexico USA in 1981.