Wyndham Clark Wins Richest U.S. Open Ever, Riding 2023 Hot Streak
Wyndham Clark continued his sudden rise up the professional golf ranks by winning the 2023 U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club with a 10-under-par 280.
“I feel like I belong on this stage, and even two, three years ago when people didn’t know who I was, I felt like I could still play and compete against the best players in the world,” said Clark, whose father, Randall, played professional tennis and whose mom, Lise, died of breast cancer when he was in college. “I felt like I’ve shown that this year.”
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In his first four seasons on the PGA Tour, Clark—a Colorado high school buddy of 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey—had done little to distinguish himself from the pack: nine top 10 finishes and a total of $4,922,045 in earnings. But in the 2022-23 season, he’s broken out with six top 10s in the last seven months, including a win at the Wells Fargo Championship in May, good for $3.6 million on its own.
For the Open win, he took home another $3.6 million—pushing career total to just over $15 million. The largesse comes thanks to a record $20 million purse, up from $17.5 million last year and the highest among the majors played so far this year. It also equals the payouts of the PGA Tour’s new “designated” events.
“I think in general for us, we want this to be big,” Mike Whan, the USGA’s executive director, said of the tournament in his media session. “I think purse is part of that, so we actually—I want to say it was November of last year—we budgeted 20. We thought 20 was what was probably going to be right for us.”
Whan’s “big” number means the payout has doubled since 2016, when the Open pot held $10M and Dustin Johnson pocketed $1.8 for the win—or $300,000 less than Rory McIlroy got for finishing second this year. A 100% increase in seven years puts to shame the inflation that has had Jerome Powell running like a McIlroy drive for the last 24 months.
Speaking of McIlroy, he may “hate LIV,” but he can thank the upstart circuit for triggering the spending war that has led to better pay for all.
Of course, the extra prize money didn’t materialize out of thin air. “We made choices to get it to 20,” Whan said. “But it’s a choice, right? We have a business just like you have a business, and if you’re going to spend more on a purse you’re going to spend less on other things, and we made that choice.”
U.S. Open proceeds finance everything the USGA does, from the other 14 championships it runs to governing the sport to handing out grants for things like turf research and youth and diversity initiatives. More for the pros—whose pay has already skyrocketed—means less for all those other hungry mouths.
Whan spent part of his time talking about a visit to Maggie Hathaway Golf Club, a public course in south Los Angeles that was recently restored thanks to a $1 million investment by the USGA, LACC and the Southern California Golf Association. “We’re going to make a real difference in this community,” he said.
What other communities might the USGA have impacted if it set the purse at, say, $18 million, which still would have pushed it past the PGA Championship ($17.5) for the biggest payday?
Other choices impact the answer to that question. The USGA says it could have sold 40,000 tickets a day, but capped attendance at 22,000 “to make sure the experience here is still a quality experience,” Whan said.
Along similar lines, Whan pushed TV partner NBC to limit its commercial load after reading a torrent of complaints on Twitter last year, an experience he compared to “sticking your face in the fan.” The result is a 30% reduction in commercial breaks, although that includes converting some from full breaks to the “play through” picture-in-picture ads that impede on the broadcast.
Whan confirmed that reduction did not come with a discount on the rights fee. “I’m proud of NBC,” he said. “They’ve got bills to pay, and so do we, so I get that.”
To help make up for some of those choices, the USGA undertook the largest build and largest hospitality support in its history. “[In 2002] we set a new mark for local corporate hospitality, and LACC just doubled that mark,” Whan said. “Quite an impressive feat.”
Maybe so, but not as impressive as Clark’s 2023, which now rolls toward Royal Liverpool and a July date with the Open Championship.
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