CASTLE ROCK — Brecken Schoonover wants to be Wyndham Clark when he grows up. Miken Schoonover wants to be Wyndham Clark’s agent.
The brothers from Parker, ages 10 and 6, bounced along the walkway Sunday that bridged the 18th hole and the giant clubhouse at Castle Pines Golf Club, and with good reason. Both carried a pale white golf ball kissed by a signature in black, still-wet ink. Clark’s signature.
“What are you going to do with those balls?” I asked them.
“Put it in my room on a shelf,” Brecken said, “after we finish re-doing my room.”
Miken had a better idea.
“I’m gonna sell it,” he said.
“Really?” I gasped.
“Yeah,” Miken continued, “it’s gotta be worth something.”
Gotta say: Kid had a point there.
“You’re not going to do that,” their father, Dylan Schoonover, said in a voice that wagged like a grandma’s finger. “You are not going to do that.”
“It’s gotta be worth something, though,” Miken pleaded.
“Absolutely not.”
“But you said I could sell that Pokemon card …”
“No, no, that’s a Pokemon card,” Dylan stressed. “It’s totally different.”
You can’t put a price on pressing the flesh with an honest-to-goodness local legend. Who cares if said legend shot a 74 at the BMW Championship on Sunday?
“That’s pretty sick that they got to meet Wyndham Clark, him being a hometown kid and everything,” Dylan said of Clark, the former Valor Christian standout who also happens to be ranked as the fifth-best golfer on the planet. “These kids are all gonna go to Valor. They go to Cherry Hills right now, which feeds right into Valor. So just couldn’t be more thankful.”
Clark finished in a nine-way tie for 13th, thanks to a slew of stinkers on the final four holes, and might’ve won the weekend anyway. Late Saturday night, the ex-Eagles great announced he was donating $50,000 to a Colorado charity via his PLAY BIG foundation.
A man in the spotlight bares his true colors when the cameras are turned off. After his toughest round of the tourney, Clark spent the next 25-30 minutes signing autographs, posing for pictures, and making forever memories. Loving his hometown. His hometown loving him right back.
“That was really cool,” Clark reflected. “I’m bummed with my play. I wish I could play better.”
Valor’s finest had pulled into a tie for fifth after back-to-back birdies on the 10th and 11th, poised for a late charge. But Front Range winds, like momentum, proved fleeting. A bogey at the 15th knocked Clark back to even on the day, staggering him. No. 17 landed a right cross for the knockout.
His tee shot took a hard hook into the trees right of the fairway. His second stayed right of safety and plopped into a deep bunker. His third refused to leave the sand. His fourth cleared the bunker, but also the green — overshooting the mark, scattering the crowd and rolling into a gap in the gallery. His fifth cleared the spectators, then rolled into a bunker hidden behind the green. It took two more shots to end the torment, and the double-bogey cost him a spot in the top 10.
“(With) altitude golf, (it’s) very hard to control the ball,” Clark said later. “Sometimes it gets a little goofy trying to control your distance. And that’s all I’ve got to say on that. I mean, I didn’t make many putts. It’s tough to play at altitude.”
But the Dub Club showed out anyway, cheering harder and louder the farther that blasted ball was from the hole.
“YOU CAN DO IT, WYNDHAM!”
“YEAH, WYNDHAM!”
“YOU GOT THIS, WYNDHAM!”
“WOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
A mini-wall of willing high-fivers lined up on the pedestrian path left and uphill of the green. Darned if Clark didn’t slap every last one of those palms, just a few seconds after his worst stinking hole of the weekend.
“I mean, it was nice that they showed me love,” Clark said. “Obviously, I really screwed up the tournament on that hole. But it was nice to have the love.”
Castle Pines turned its back on him late, sadly. The breeze, at elevation, made sure shots a mystery. With the rough thick and flowing as a Newfoundland’s coat, all it took was one bad gust to spoil an afternoon.
“I mean, it’s hard to play at altitude,” Clark said. “We control our ball to the yard 90% of the time. And you’ll come here, and it’s like 40% of the time. And it’s just a guessing game. There’s a lot of luck involved with all the (shots).
“But with that said, Denver’s a great sports town. This is a great golf course. And the love and support we feel from the fans here is amazing.”
Darn straight. So let’s not make it 18 years until the next one at Castle Pines, maybe?
“I would love for us to come back here at least every few years — every other year, every year,” Clark said. “I mean, it would be great to be able to come back here. I hope we do. Hopefully, we’ll figure that out.”
Hopefully. Because for the kids and their dads in the crowd, a Sunday afternoon watching Wyndham Clark up close was absolutely priceless.
Well, mostly priceless.
“Dad,” Miken asked quietly, “if I wash it, will the autograph come off the ball?”
“Yes,” Dylan sighed as they turned on a sunbeam and walked toward the clubhouse. “Yes it will.”
