Séamus Power climbed into the top 100 on the PGA Tour FedEx Cup rankings with a tie for 19th at the CJ CUP Byron Nelson at TPC Craig Ranch, but the final round was all about Wyndham Clark.
The 2023 U.S. Open champion got red-hot on the greens to overtake Si Woo Kim and win by three thanks to a closing 11-under-par round of 60, taking him to 30-under.
Clark gained over four strokes on the field with the flatstick in the final round and ended the week ranked number one in Strokes Gained: Putting. Four birdies on the front nine were enough to see him draw within one of the Korean who’d started the final round with a two-stroke advantage and made four birdies of his own before dropping a shot on the eighth.
World number one Scottie Scheffler played alongside Kim in the final group, but never got within the two strokes he trailed by at the start, and he had a new target to chase when Clark rolled in a 16-footer for eagle on the par-5 12th.
Though Kim birdied to tie the lead again, and both men birdied the driveable par-4 14th, Clark dropped a bomb from 45 feet on 15 to take sole possession again and then made another ‘two’ on 17 to double his advantage.
He closed the door by sticking an approach to inside three feet on the last and holed the putt to record the second round of 60 of the week, leaving Kim, the other man who flirted with 59 in solo second at -27 and three shots back, and defending champion Scheffler in solo third at -25.
“Man, it was pretty amazing,” Clark said afterwards. “Obviously I made a birdie on 14, and I look and Si Woo’s right there on my heels. Then I birdied 15, and I just knew I had to keep birdieing because I knew Si Woo was probably going to do the same thing, or even Scottie.
“I felt pretty comfortable, but I knew I had to put the pedal to the metal and keep making birdies. I made more than I thought I was going to make, that’s for sure.”
Clark is now the first player to win twice on the PGA Tour by virtue of a final-round 60, though the initial one which came at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in 2024 was in the third round and the final round was suspended and then cancelled as a storm blew through Monterrey.
“Yeah, two different experiences,” he said. “It’s a nice accolade to have. I look at Pebble, it was amazing, but that one, I was so close to shooting 59. At that golf course, that would have been just epic.
“This one, really 59 wasn’t necessarily in the cards. So it’s just amazing to finish. I’m just really proud of myself that I didn’t waver and I didn’t sit back and just try to hit to 20 feet and kind of leak my way in there. I was still very aggressive.”
Power, who was in a tie for 12th at the halfway mark, will be left to rue a disappointing level-par 71 on moving day on a golf course that offered birdie chances by the bucketload.
He made five of them in the final round having dropped a shot on the second, and he climbed 10 places on the leaderboard and shared 19th place. The result lifts the Waterford man to 100th in the FedEx Cup rankings, putting him back on course to regain full PGA Tour playing privileges for 2027.
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