SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — Six golfers have won the career Grand Slam and on Father’s Day 2026, on the day he turns 30, Scottie Scheffler has the chance to become the seventh. Through three rounds of this 126th U.S. Open, here at Shinnecock Hills, Scheffler is one under par and in a four-way tie for second, six shots behind the 54-hole leader, Wyndham Clark.

Should Wyndham Clark win this tourney? Of course he should. But there’s something not-quite-right about the word should, and there’s something not-quite-right about big leads on Sundays at majors. They can get in the leader’s head. They’re unreliable.

Clark, winner of the 2023 U.S. Open, has led after the first, second and third rounds here. Leads get heavier and heavier. Big leads get heavier yet. Three days of windblown golf can make your head rattle. The leader’s long wait for a mid-afternoon tee time can lead to wayward thinking.

This is all a ’round-about way of saying that Scottie Scheffler’s chances of winning his first U.S. Open on Sunday, and completing the career Grand Slam, are not totally remote. Would a win from him be a longshot? Of course. But not an impossible-shot. A Sunday 66 could be enough. Golf is a numbers game, and, of course, a head game. You can’t separate the two.

“I think it’s appropriate to understand what’s at stake,” Scheffler said early Saturday night, with Clark still on the course. The sentence is such an insight into how his mind works, about his ability and desire to take things straight on. “I’ve worked really hard for a long time to have a chance to win golf tournaments and to win major championships. I think understanding the moment, and giving it your best shot, is all part of the process.”

The man was faking nothing. The man fakes nothing.

Ernie Els was watching from home, in South Florida. In his World Golf Hall of Fame career, Els won two U.S. Opens and two British Opens. He loves Shinnecock Hills, with all its rattles and rolls, with all its nods to “Golf in the Kingdom.” He likes Shinnecock’s deep beach-sand bunkers and its grasses that present in every shade of brown and green. Shinnecock brings two Open rota courses, or two in particular, to mind for Els: Royal Portrush, where Scheffler won the Open last July, and Muirfield, where Els won the 2002 Open.

Els knows something that Scheffler may find out on Sunday: the mindset, and the skillset, that paves the way to a British Open win can pave the way for a U.S. Open win. Not any U.S. Open win. A U.S. Open win at linksy Shinnecock Hills.

News

The bizarre U.S. Open irrepressibility of Wyndham Clark

By: James Colgan

“I think the Sunday setup will favor Scheffler, I think it’s better for his higher ball flight,” Els said. The Sunday pin positions are likely to be far more demanding than they have been so far, and the course is likely to be, by far, its firmest. The harder the course, the better for Scheffler, and any chaser. The prospect of completing the career Grand Slam, Els said, will be a positive for Scheffler.

Tiger Woods needed three years to win the career Grand Slam. Jack Nicklaus needed four. Gary Player needed seven. Ben Hogan needed eight. Gene Sarazen needed 13 years. Rory McIlroy needed 14. If Scheffler wins on Sunday, he will have completed the career Grand Slam in four years — four years and two months, to be precise — and he will have done it on his first chance. He won the Masters in 2022 and ’24, and he won the PGA Championship and British Open last year.

“It may look like a links golf course because there are no trees and you have that kind of grass, but I don’t think it necessarily plays like [a links course],” Scheffler said. “You can hit a few linksy-type shots, but overall, the ball is still played in the air on this golf course. The ball needs to be hit up in the air, especially to hold these greens.”

So, in conclusion, combining Els’s commentary and Scheffler’s: On Sunday at Shinnecock, we’re going to get some of both, British golf and American golf.

Scheffler and Clark are in the day’s last twosome on Sunday, off at 2:30 p.m. Clark will be playing, on some level, to make us all forget about how he bashed in that locker at Oakmont last year.

Scheffler is playing for something far more glorious.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com.

The post Wyndham Clark can see U.S. Open finish line. But he still has to cross it appeared first on Golf.

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — Here it is: The Moment.

The sun is setting on U.S. Open Saturday, the people are growing just a little restless, and Wyndham Clark’s ball is in hell. A U.S. Open is in our midst. It’s touching our fingertips. We can FEEL it.

Clark has a 15-footer for par here on the 13th. He hit his approach high and soft and straight into a bunker. And then hit his bunker shot to 15 feet. And now he’s a low-percentage miss away from a bogey that would open the door just far enough for the size 13 shoes of one Scottie Scheffler. All Clark has to do is miss.

And then, bam, Clark’s right arm is extended in front of him in a moment of quiet exhalation. He’s walking to the next tee box and writing a number 4 with his small pencil. He’s drained what feels like his 12th (but is really like his fourth) back-saving par of the afternoon … and sucked all of the air out of Shinnecock in the process.

It was an unusually quiet walk down the back nine for Wyndham Clark on U.S. Open Saturday, the same day he emerged with a six-shot 54-hole lead and a vice grip on his second major championship. Only a few dozen fans were walking along the ropes as Clark finished his journey up the 18th — a scene so unusual in the history of this famously egalitarian tournament that not even the leader could believe it.

“It was unfortunate it got a little flat,” said Clark, who leads a group of four players by six (one being Scheffler). “Sometimes it made it tough to stay really focused because it seemed like everyone was leaving, and it was like the tournament was over, and I had to keep myself really focused and in the present.”

Of course, to the throngs of fans headed toward the exits after that putt fell on the 13th — and frankly much before it too — the tournament already was over. Ever since Clark started this U.S. Open with a 64 in mostly listless golden hour conditions, he has held the tournament by the throat. On Saturday, you didn’t need to stay to the bitter end to see that reality had not changed.

“Oh my gosh,” one fan said, exasperated, when the eagle putt fell into the hole on 16 to briefly bring the lead to seven. “It’s over!”

Technically, not yet. We have seen too many of these major championships to know that a 54-hole lead means about as much as the leaderboard it’s stapled to. The tournaments are 72 holes. The U.S. Open is 72 holes on the high wire over a snake pit.

And yet, not even Clark could deny that. If you watched all 50-plus feet of par putts fall on Saturday evening, you did not leave Shinnecock with the feeling that you were witnessing the loser.

“Yeah. Scottie is the best player in the world, and he’s going to play probably really good,” Clark said. “But it’s nice to have a six-shot lead on him.”

Should Clark close things out in casual fashion on Sunday, it will be tempting to frame the win as a career-altering moment for an unusually gifted player, particularly after Clark’s high-profile locker room debacle at Oakmont a year ago. But it feels more accurate, even to the man himself, to call it for what it is: the latest extreme high of a very volatile career.

“Today was very volatile. Hopefully tomorrow it can be definitely a little more low-key, and hopefully I can play some boring golf,” Clark said. “But I don’t disagree with [the suggestion I’m a volatile player.]”

For the few dozen fans who caught all of his back nine on Saturday evening, there was something oddly charming about this side of that volatility. Clark would not be denied. He would not be stopped. He would not yield an inch of ground even as nearly everyone and everything around him seemed to be rooting for the slightest retreat.

He was, in a word, irrepressible — and that is a very difficult thing to be at a U.S. Open.

So now, here we are, on Saturday evening, preparing for — and some of us hoping for — a Moment.

The U.S. Open has not truly broken out yet, and Wyndham Clark is the reason why. That’s mighty impressive.

The post The bizarre U.S. Open irrepressibility of Wyndham Clark appeared first on Golf.