With all of the hype surrounding Wyndham Clark’s putter at the 2023 U.S. Open, it’s easy to forget he had 13 other clubs in the bag during his first major championship victory.
While I’ve admittedly written plenty about his putter myself – here, here, and even here – I also wanted to understand more about the rest of his gear. Let’s remember, Clark turned a chaotic LACC course setup and stacked Sunday leaderboard into somewhat of a final-round snoozer down the stretch with his powerful and reliable cut shot. It obviously wasn’t just the putter that separated him from the field. And while Twitter may have led you to believe the course was nothing but a birdie fest, Clark was the only player to finish double digits under par for the week.
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If Clark was under the radar for the general golfing audience before (even after his 2023 Wells Fargo Championship win), he’s not anymore.
A quick look into his stats helps to show that Clark’s first major championship win was actually bubbling just beneath the surface, and he was poised to explode on the scene to the mainstream.
So far in the 2022-2023 PGA Tour season, Clark, a Titleist staffer, ranks 14th in Strokes Gained: Total, 25th in Strokes Gained: Approach the Green, 6th in Driving Distance (314.6 yards), 19th in Strokes Gained: Off the Tee, and 19th in Greens in Regulation percentage (68.02 percent). He’s also ranked 5th in Club Head Speed, averaging 123.44 mph per drive. Pretty casually, too.
The guy is a ball striker, through-and-through. He’s also worked hard over the past year or so with Titleist tour rep J.J. Van Wezenbeeck – along with Clark’s coach/caddie John Ellis – to dial in his equipment to optimize his swing and ball flight.
I caught up with Van Wezenbeeck on Wednesday at the 2023 Travelers Championship (just days after the 2023 U.S. Open) to learn more about Clark’s Titleist setup and recent changes.
Here’s what Van Wezenbeeck had to say about Clark’s 2023 U.S. Open-winning setup.
Andrew Tursky: I heard that Wyndham may have made a big lie angle change with the irons about a year ago? What impact have Clark’s lie angles played on his iron game?
J.J. Van Wezenbeeck, Titleist: Yeah. He and his caddie John spent a lot of time on their swing, and we decided to move lie angles – we actually moved them twice over the last year, moving things a little flatter from where they had them. [Wyndham and John] are really good at letting ball flight dictate lie angles, so they work a lot on start lines and hitting different golf shots.
When his swing gets too fade-biased, they hit hooks on the range. When it gets too neutral, they hit big cuts on the range, and they’ll use ball flight to help with lie angle.
Do you remember what the lie angle changes were, like, one degree upright to three degrees flat, or something like that?
J.J.: I don’t think it’s even that basic…it’s been a scenario where it’s a little here, and then a lot there. Every club wasn’t the same. It’s a one-by-one situation.
It’s not, ‘I’m a one flat guy.’
Each club has its own unique lie angle to promote the flight that they want.
In general, what does shifting a lie angle flat do for a golf swing?
J.J.: Typically, it’s going to shift your start lines farther to the right for a right-handed golfer. So, as we move upright, we’re going to just shift that start line left. As we move flat, we’re gonna shift that start line to the right. And so as they were working on different things in his swing, they just wanted to get those start lines to match the patterns that he was creating.
And then with his driver, he’s not an A1 setting type guy. How is his driver set up, and why?
J.J.: Yeah, so for a player who’s predominantly cut-biased, when we first started working together, he was testing some product at the end of 2021.
He wanted some help on his heel miss, so utilizing that SureFit track, we’re able to put the weight all the way in the heel. He’s in that H2 position, so when he does heel strike it, it doesn’t over-cut on him. It helps stabilize that ball speed and flight for him.
And then can you just give people an idea of what Wyndham Clark is like on the launch monitor? What stands out?
J.J.: It’s fun to watch. His ability for a player with that speed to hit a variety of golf shots on command – there’s a few players I’ve worked with in the past that he reminds me of, because his stock shot will be kind of in the mid-to-upper 180s, with a little more spin than some of these players on the PGA Tour have. But he has the ability to hit a draw and drop his spin, and get into the upper 180s with high launch and low spin. So he works a middle-cut all the way to a high straight ball that allows him to take advantage of different holes.
So he’s impressive on the range, and he’s one of those players that we all kind of knew the skill set when you see the short game shots he can hit, the iron shots he can hit, and how well he hits a driver. It was a matter of time, and I think there’s a lot of discussion around the PGA Tour that when he got his first win, it was going to unlock a lot more.
Anything else that stands out about Wyndham’s clubs?
J.J.: Well, he plays [True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X7 shafts] in his irons. So he’s in that really heavy, really stiff scenario with his irons. He has large grips, so he’s trying to do a lot to stabilize flight. And then I think that utility-iron build in his longest iron, in a T200, you see how versatile that was around the U.S. Open for him where he can flight it off the tee, but then he can hit high soft ones that he had to use on a few of the par 3’s and into some par 5’s.
