SAINT-QUENTIN-EN-YVELINES, France – The thing about Wyndham Clark is he’s a streaky golfer.
When he’s right, he’s as good as anybody. You remember, right? He won the 2023 U.S. Open. Earlier this year, he shot a 60 to win a shortened event at Pebble Beach. He was second at Bay Hill, tied for second at the Players Championship.
Clark has demonstrated why he deserved to be one of only four Americans who qualified for these Paris Olympics.
He just hasn’t shown it lately.
And that includes Thursday’s Olympics first round at Le Golf National. While most of the 60-player field took advantage of ideal scoring conditions on Day 1, Clark opened with a 4-over 75. His first three holes: bogey, double bogey, bogey. Though he stabilized from there, he had another double on No. 15.
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Clark is tied for 56th, one stroke above dead last. He’s one of only 13 players over par. Were there a cut in this tournament, he’d surely miss it. Unless Clark gets real hot, real fast – Pebble Beach-style – the number of Americans golfers in realistic medal contention at these Olympics is already down from four to three.
That does no favors for the current Olympic qualifying system, which is based on the world ranking and has drawn scrutiny in recent weeks and months, largely because it snubbed reigning U.S. Open champ Bryson DeChambeau and sent a struggling Clark to Paris instead.
This keeps coming up because the U.S. team is the most difficult to make of any golfing country at the Olympics. That’s because only a maximum of four players can make it. Whereas Americans comprise the majority of a typical PGA Tour field, it’s 6.67 percent here.
“We get four guys because we’re all top 15 in the world,” Scottie Scheffler said, “and it’s still by far the hardest team to make. If we could bring all of our best players, the field for this tournament would look a lot different, and I’m sure we’d have a better chance of taking home some more medals. But we only get four guys. It’s hard to choose the best four.”
As the qualifying process continues to get attention and debate, it’s likely to get reevaluated before the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
Spain’s Jon Rahm said this week that he’d prefer each country selects its team, like in basketball.
Scheffler said he prefers the current system because it’s objective.
“We had some…
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