Two-time U.S. Open champ credits sports psychologist

On June 21, 2026 (Father’s Day) Wyndham Clark won his second U.S. Open Championship at the extraordinarily difficult Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in “The Hamptons” on Long Island. After graduating from Valor Christian school in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, Clark played golf at Oklahoma State for three years before transferring to Oregon for his senior year.

Clark’s father, Randall, played professional tennis before injuries cut his tennis career short. His mother, Lise, was crowned Miss New Mexico in the 1981 Miss America pageant. Following a 14-year battle with cancer, Lise died of stage-3 breast cancer in 2013, before Wyndham’s sophomore year in college.

The loss of his mother had a profoundly devastating effect on Wyndham; and the grieving continues. Clark was a standout at Oklahoma State, earning Big 12 Player of the Year honors as a freshman, but struggled to keep focus in the following two seasons.

“When I returned to OSU that fall,” he shared with Golf Digest, “I continued to play solid golf, tried to stay strong, but that spring the grief boiled over. It hit me that I couldn’t call my mom anymore. Life on the course became hard, and I figured ‘why have an outlet that adds to my personal frustration?’”

He transferred to Oregon for his senior year.

Clark turned pro in 2017 and earned his PGA Tour card in 2018. It took a while, but his breakthrough came with his first PGA Tour victory at the Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow in May of 2023. A month later, in June 2023, he won the U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club.

He went from 268th in the Official World Golf Ranking in 2022 to 13th after his win in L.A. However, he had no wins in 2024 and 2025.

He told Golfweek, “I started spiraling a little bit mentally and my swing was off.”

After missing the cut at the U.S. Open held at Oakmont Country Club his anger got the best of him as he damaged a locker in the Oakmont locker room. More than the locker, the episode damaged Clark’s reputation among golf fans. He was temporarily banned from the club until he paid for damages and made a sizeable contribution to a specified charity.

Continuing to struggle with grief issues, coupled with his failure to win in his first four years on the PGA Tour, people close to him urged Clark to consider hiring a sport psychologist. He started working with Julie Elion near the end of 2022.

Elion had been a prominent figure on the mental side of golf since early 2000. She had worked with Phil Mickelson back in 2012. She had been working with Jimmy Walker when he won the PGA Championship in 2016. She was credited as Walker’s “secret weapon” behind his breakthrough victory.

As for Clark, may viewed his decision to start working with Elion as a move that turned his career around. In Netflix’s “Full Swing Season 2,” Clark revealed that he was “in shambles” after his mother passed away, almost losing his Tour card. He said that working with Elion, “now I have something and someone that is able to get me in the direction I want to be.”

Julie Elion is a sports psychologist and founder of the Center for Athletic Performance Enhancement. She has been involved with her clients in over 150 PGA Tour tournament wins and 25 major championship wins in her 25-year career.

She graduated from Amherst College in 1986 and earned an M.A. in applied psychology from the University of Santa Monica in 1991. Elion has just released a book about her work as a mental performance coach with advice for everyone: “Mastering Your Mental Game: Secrets from My Twenty-Five Years on the PGA Tour – A Practical Guide to Improving Your Performance in Sports, Work and Life.”

It is available through Amazon. A short excerpt: “(Wyndham) beat a terrific field to win the Wells Fargo, his first PGA Tour win. My reaction that day (and his): this stuff works.”

I plan to do a column soon exclusively on Elion’s new book.