25 Highlights in 25 Weeks: Highlight #7 – Wyndham Clark

Pelican Lakes Resort & Golf turns 25 on July 12, 2024! To celebrate, we are listing the top 25 moments in Pelican Lakes’ history. These events are not ranked and highlight the biggest events, features, and happenings at the distinguished 27-hole facility in Northern Colorado.

Blog 7 out of 25: Wyndham Clark

Pelican Lakes Resort & Golf has hosted numerous celebrities throughout its nearly 25-year history. Those famous people include athletes like Fred Funk, Mike Shanahan, John Elway, Gary Kubiak, Joe Sakic, Claude Lemieux, Milan Hedjuk, Shane Carwin, Justin Gaethje, Tommie Frazier, Bret Saberhagen, and performers like Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Larry the Cable Guy, Little Big Town, Darius Rucker, and Colt Ford.

Even President Donald Trump has visited our facility.

But the one celebrity who might stand out above them all is PGA Tour winner and star of the Netflix series Full Swing Season 2, Wyndham Clark.

The reason his visit shines above all is of what he accomplished on Oct. 3-4, 2011.

At the time, Wyndham was a senior at Valor Christian High School in Highlands Ranch and competed in the Class 4A state boys’ golf tournament held at Pelican Lakes. He already won the state championship as a sophomore and finished runner-up in his freshman and junior seasons, so he was looking to become just the 11^th person in Colorado to win multiple Class 4A state individual titles. (This includes the winners before 2000 when the Colorado High School Activities Association created more than one classification in boys’ golf.)

A story in the Oct. 4, 2011, Denver Post reads, “In what will go down as arguably the best two-day performance ever at a Colorado high school state championship event, Clark matches his opening-round, 8-under-par 64 with another stunning 64…and won his second Class 4A boys golf state championship by eight shots.”

You read that right…Wyndham shot a 64-64 (16-under) to win by EIGHT STROKES! Windsor High School freshman, and current Pelican Lakes member Brett Krantz finished in a tie for 31^st with rounds of 75-82. Jake Staiano, the current course record holder at Pelican Lakes’ sister course RainDance National Resort & Golf, tied for 17^th with a 76-75.

Wyndham’s two-day scorecard featured six birdies and an eagle each day. He accomplished all of this while tackling a golf course stretched to 7,183 yards, but with ideal 80-degree playing conditions.

Upon completion, Wyndham told the Denver Post, “I kind of set my own par of 66. That’s what I wanted to shoot if I played decent. I started out great and thought I could score well on the back side.”

His tournament featured a birdie chip-in from a short-sided bunker on the ninth, two-putt birdies and bombing tee shots on the 15^th that came to rest past the intersecting cart path more than 370 yards from the tee. Members witnessing those drives joked that the club should put a plaque in the ground to signify where his drives landed.

The fall after winning at Pelican Lakes, Wyndham enrolled at Oklahoma State University on a golf scholarship. He won player of the year while at OSU in 2014, and again in 2017, but this time at the University of Oregon where he transferred shortly after his mother, Lise, died of breast cancer.

He graduated from Oregon in 2017 with a business degree and turned professional. He spent a few years on the Web.com Tour, notching four top-10 finishes, and eventually qualified for the 2018-19 PGA Tour season.

Wyndham finally achieved a lifelong goal of winning a PGA event in May 2023 when he claimed the Wells Fargo Championship by four strokes.

One month later, Wyndham reached immortality by winning the 2023 U.S. Open at the Los Angeles Country Club. He beat veteran Tour player Rory McIlroy by a shot and won $3.6 million.

The win propelled him onto the U.S. Ryder Cup team in the fall of 2023. The Americans faltered in the 44^th Ryder Cup to the Europeans by a score of 16-1/2 to 11-1/2. Wyndham’s record during the weekend was 1-1-1 with his loss coming in the singles match against Robert MacIntyre.

The Denver native carried his good golf into the new year by winning the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro Am by one stroke in an abbreviated 54-hole tournament due to weather. Not only did Wyndham earn another $3.6 million with the victory, but his third-round score of 60 broke the course record.

The U.S. Open victory solidified his entry into the event for the next 10 years as well as the three other major championships (The Open, The Masters and the PGA Championship) for the next five years.

And those lucky enough to witness his play on those two beautiful fall days in 2011, can forever say they watched a major champion winner compete at Pelican Lakes.

And Pelican Lakes won’t soon forget the time we were introduced to Wyndham Clark.