Wyndham Clark watches his tee shot on the third hole during the third round of the BMW Championship golf tournament at Castle Pines Golf Club. Mandatory Credit: Christopher Hanewinckel-USA TODAY Sports
Xander Schauffele is a fighter. He proved it again on Saturday. He started the third round 11 strokes behind and made a double bogey at No. 3 when his approach found the water in front of the green.
“I kind of was posing, and it was a little embarrassing for that thing to hit the wall and go in the water 20 yards off,” he said.
After a bogey at No. 6, when he hit a flagstick, he had dropped back to even par. “Felt like I had to dig deep in my little patience bucket that’s running thin this late in the year on a Saturday,” he said.
But there was no quit in Schauffele. He rattled off three straight birdies to finish the front nine. He nearly hooped his tee shot at the 192-yard par 3 to set up a tap-in birdie and tacked on three more coming home to shoot 67 and climb within five strokes of the lead and T-5. If he were to win on Sunday, he would vault to No. 1 in the FedEx Cup as long as Scottie Scheffler finished worse than T-3. (Scheffler is currently T-35.)
Wyndham Clark is the hometown favorite and he’s had Boston Celtics star Derrick White in his gallery every day.
“Third grade all the way to high school playing basketball against each other, and you would almost never think that he’d be at the highest level and I would be at the highest level at my sport, and two kids coming out of Colorado, it doesn’t happen very often,” Clark said.
The 2023 U.S. Open champ vaulted into contention with a 5-under 67 and sits T-5. He made a 17-foot eagle putt at 17 and the fans roared with delight. Clark said it was about time.
“Everyone is torching the par 5s except for me,” he said.
With only four golfers ahead of him, Clark is one low round away from winning his hometown event.
“My goal, my caddie and I, we just wanted to be in contention,” Clark said. “Regardless of what happens tomorrow, at least I had the juices flowing this week and battled a lot of the adversity of handling hometown kid, the pressure. Then also I haven’t been starting very well in tournaments, and I just feel like I’ve overcome a lot of good things. Regardless of what happens, at least I have good momentum going into next week.”
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