On Friday morning, as Wyndham Clark performed the par-4 third gap, the sirens from the principles police reverberated throughout Bay Hill and on social media.
Golf followers slammed Clark for taking reduction from an embedded ball within the fairway, labeling him a ‘cheater,’ amongst different diatribes. Others felt he ought to have obtained a two-stroke penalty after seeing the replay. However the video exhibits his ball returning to his authentic pitch mark, thus negating any query about whether or not or not he ought to have taken reduction.
it’s laborious to inform on this clip but it surely did land in its personal pitch mark however i’m certain wyndham Clark Drop in Spherical 2 at Arnold Palmer Invitational will likely be questioned pic.twitter.com/2PKDk2BGDJ
— Ladiestees (@Ladiestees1) March 7, 2025
PGA Tour officers agreed, and launched a press release shortly after Clark took reduction from the third fairway.
“After reviewing ShotLink video of Wyndham Clark’s tee shot on the third gap throughout the second spherical of the Arnold Palmer Invitational introduced by Mastercard, the PGA TOUR Guidelines Committee decided that the ball returned to its personal pitch mark, which entitled Clark to free reduction.”
However let’s say Clark’s ball got here to relaxation in a pitch mark that was not his. Given how delicate the fairways have been at Bay Hill have been on Friday, this might have been an actual risk.
But, you will need to put your self in Clark’s footwear on the tee field and from the green. How may he have recognized that his ball landed in anybody’s pitch mark moreover his personal? It’s not like Clark is watching the PGA Tour Stay broadcast whereas taking part in. His ball had a heap of mud and was clearly embedded, so he did what every other participant would have finished: taken acceptable reduction.
“Didn’t know there was any confusion clearly after I’m taking part in,” Clark mentioned after.
“After we hit it I used to be asking for it to cease. We by no means noticed it bounce. Then we stand up there and it’s in a plugged lie. My ball was lined with mud. So we took reduction, didn’t suppose something of it, and, yeah.”
Clark started Friday’s second spherical atop the leaderboard at 5-under par and opened with a birdie on the first gap. He stood at 6-under for the championship when this incident occurred, and wound up ending at that quantity on the finish of the day. He made three extra birdies, all of which got here on the again 9, however a double bogey on the fifteenth gap soured his day. He pushed his tee-shot out-of-bounds, which led the 2023 U.S. Open champion to re-load from the tee and pencil in a six on his rating card.
“That gap’s very powerful,” Clark mentioned.
“I used to be pissed off with the tee shot.”
He wound up holing a 21-footer for his double-bogey, which led to a fist-pump.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever fist pumped a double bogey,” Clark added.
“Any shot is essential. I don’t fist pump that a lot, however to me it simply was extra of like an inner factor, like Let’s go, and gave me form of some momentum for the final three holes.”
He bounced again with a birdie on the benign par-5 sixteenth however did not get up-and-down for par on the tough par-3 seventeenth. After closing with a par on the well-known 18th, Clark’s rating totaled a 1-under 71. He now trails Irishman Shane Lowry by two strokes on the 36-hole mark.
Jack Milko is a golf employees author for SB Nation’s Enjoying Via. Comply with him on X @jack_milko.