CROMWELL, Conn. — Golf has always been a spectator sport a world apart from the rest. Could you imagine holding up a “quiet please” sign at Gampel Pavilion? Any baseball fan ever get offended when a ballplayer took his bat to the nearest water cooler after striking out?

In golf, a certain decorum has been part of the deal for a century plus. Competitors were expected to keep their cool and polite applause was the loudest it got … until fairly recently. Last week at the U.S. Open, fans at Shinnecock Hills on Long Island were heard getting all over Wyndham Clark, hoping he would “choke,” trying to will his next shot into the bunker as he played the course with fan favorite Scottie Scheffler.

“Golf is in the process of … leaving just the golf world,” said Keegan Bradley, two-time Travelers champ and captain of the U.S. Ryder Cup team. “People are coming to tournaments that are sports fans and that’s how people in New York cheer on the Knicks or the Giants or whatever. And they’re coming to tournaments and they’re sports fans, and they’re golfers, but I think that we’re entering a time where the game is really growing in popularity. I think people are coming to golf tournaments to have a good time. I found it a little surprising, considering Wyndham’s American, and at the U.S. Open, but Scottie Scheffler’s a really popular player going for the Grand Slam.”

Maybe correct golfing society was shocked over such a display but, speaking of tradition, the stately locker room at Oakmont had stood intact for 122 years before Clark, having missed the cut there at the 2025 U.S. Open, tore it up in a rage. Clark paid for repairs, went through anger-management sessions and issued public apologies, but he is still repairing his image. Leading wire-to-wire at Shinnecock to capture the U.S. Open a second time may have been a start, or, given the nature of modern sports fandom, may have been even more annoying to the galleries.

“I’m not going to lie, it’s not great to be disliked,” Clark said Wednesday, as he returned triumphantly to the TPC River Highlands, where it all began. “But I’m just going to continue to be the person I am, because I know who I am and I think people will hopefully see that I’m not that guy that, I’m not the person that did those terrible things last year at Oakmont. Hopefully, over time, people actually believe that and become Wyndham Clark fans again.”

The odds are in his favor in this sense: If there is one thing American sports fans love more than to hate a villain, it’s re-embracing a rehabilitated villain. Clark, 32, earned a degree of respect from his peers by shrugging off the fans’ negative vibes and holding off the field last week, including Scheffler, the world’s top-ranked golfer.

“The crowd was tough today,” Scheffler told reporters last Sunday. “I mean, New Yorkers, they are tough people. There was a good turnout from the fans. You like seeing the fans cheer for you. I think sometimes it can get a little too much when balls are kind of going off greens and you start hearing cheers. That felt a bit much to me. Being in the arena is not for everybody, and I think it shows a lot about Wyndham, how he handled not only this golf course but I think the crowd today as well and is a well-deserving champion.”

Bradley said, “Hey, Wyndham won, so he handled it really well.”

So at this crossroads of sorts, Wyndham Clark is back in Connecticut, where a sponsor’s exemption gave him his first start in a PGA Tour event in 2017. The reaction was far different then, when he teed up up as an amateur from the University of Oregon.

“That was almost more of a whirlwind than winning a U.S. Open because it’s your first Tour start, first time doing media, it’s your first time being on a Tour truck, and people, signing autographs,” Clark said. “I remember when they announced my name and there was actually a crowd clapping. There was hundreds of people on the tee box. You don’t really get that in college golf. It was nerve wracking. I didn’t make the cut. I was nervous. And I’m like, man, this Tour golf, these guys are shooting so far under par, and I was over par. The rough was challenging, the pin placements were a lot closer to the edges than I was used to. So it took some adjusting to it. But it was an amazing first start because this course is so much fun and the atmosphere here is one of the best on Tour.”

Over nine years, things have worked out fine for Clark on the courses, with five PGA wins and two more in Europe, the U.S. Open titles in 2023 and 26. He’s earned $38.4 million, including the $4.5 million he took home from Shinnecock, plenty of salve for the verbal slings and arrow he endured. Clark has won two of his last four starts, finished in the top 11 four times in a row and is ranked eighth in the world.

But he has earned his reputation for hotheadedness; the Oakmont locker room not a stand-alone tantrum. He flung his driver at the 2025 PGA Championship and knocked over a sign, nearly hitting a volunteer, and he’s made the occasional unfortunate statement. However, this is 2026, and in the internet-social media world in which we live the old standards of behavior have long fallen by the wayside in all walks of life — crass replacing class, emotions, including anger and frustration, worn on the sleeve. If Clark’s behavior can be seen as childish, he is also a child of his generation — and so are the fans that line the galleries, some of whom may think of the sport as Adam Sandler and Bob Barker fighting knock-down, drag out across the green. Maybe what we’re seeing is a new golf normal.

“I don’t really see any negative in more people coming to the golf,” Clark said. “I jokingly think of Happy Gilmore when he first came out and they had all those crazy fans, when he played in that movie. But I think that’s good. It brings new audiences. I think it’s great for the game of golf. Golf is cool right now. That’s going to bring cool people, and they’re going to want to watch golf and they might react differently. I think maybe it’s a little different in New York than maybe other places, but, no, I think it’s all good.”

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