It’s not often that two players who grew up in Colorado become PGA Tour rookies at the same time. But that’s exactly what’s happening this week as both Wyndham Clark and Jim Knous make their debuts as official PGA Tour members at the 2018-19 season-opening Safeway Open in Napa, Calif.
The tournament runs Thursday through Sunday (Oct. 4-7).
With such a momentous occasion at hand, it’s worthwhile to revisit how Clark and Knous arrived at this point. So we’re taking a look back on their extraordinary accomplishments while coming up through the ranks in Colorado.
Of course, their paths crossed on numerous occasions along the way, though Knous (28) is four years older than Clark (24). The most notable of those occasions came on Aug. 15, 2010 in the final round of the CGA Amateur Championship, then known as the CGA Stroke Play.
Going into the last day of that event, Clark led Knous by 10 shots, setting the stage for one of the most dramatic final rounds in CGA championship history.
Knous, a native of Basalt and current Littleton resident who was at that time in the midst of his college career at Colorado School of Mines, put together a comeback for the ages. The then-20-year-old, who had never before shot a round better than 66, blitzed Boulder Country Club with a 10-under-par 60, which broke the course record by two strokes. World Golf Hall of Famer Hale Irwin was among those who had shared the previous BCC best, at 62.
“It’s incredible,” Knous said at the time. “I’ve never even dreamed of setting a course record before and going this low. Ten under — you see that on the TV. But when it’s clicking, all those putts just seem to go in. The hole was as big as a basket. I’ll be thinking about this for a while. It was a great round.”
Clark wasn’t aware of Knous’ accomplishment until after he plugged his second shot in a greenside bunker on the par-4 18th hole. In fact, when his dad told him about the 60, Wyndham wasn’t sure if the elder Clark was playing mind games just to keep him grinding to the end. But Randall Clark was telling the truth.
Clark could have avoided a playoff by getting up and down for par from the bunker on 18, but with the bad lie, he failed to get his ball out of the sand. And after his next shot rolled 7 feet past the flag, Clark needed to sink a side-hill bogey putt to shoot 70 and force sudden death.
Knous lipped out a 20-foot birdie attempt on the first playoff hole, but both players posted pars. On the second extra hole, the 18th, Knous pulled his tee shot into the trees. After Clark hit his approach 30 feet left of the flag, Knous punched out to the fairway, then left his third shot 30 feet above the hole. Knous just missed his par attempt, then Clark clinched the victory by holing his birdie putt.
Clark, a Denver native who now lives in Las Vegas, was then 16 years and 8 months old, which made him the youngest winner of the CGA Amateur since Boulder’s Bob Byman won in 1971 before he was 16 1/2. The next year, Byman would win the U.S. Junior Amateur.
“It’s a huge accomplishment for me,” Clark said at the time. “It’s probably my greatest win, my greatest accomplishment.”
Of course, both Clark and Knous would use the achievements as steppingstones to far greater things. Let’s take a bit of a stroll down memory lane to consider what they’ve accomplished — in addition to the 2010 CGA Amateur — over the years.
WYNDHAM CLARK
— As a 15-year-old, he won the 2009 CGA Junior Stroke Play — now called the Colorado Junior Amateur — by a whopping 11 shots at Eaton Country Club.
“We were playing for second,” co-runner-up Benjamin Krueger said. “I played with (Clark) the first two rounds and that 65 he shot was insane, crazy. I wouldn’t be surprised if he turned pro before he got out of high school.”
— He tied for third in 2009 in the 15-17 age group at the prestigious Callaway Junior World Championships in San Diego.
— He advanced to the round of 16 at the 2009 U.S. Junior Amateur. He also made match play at the national event in 2010.
— He won two 4A state high school titles while at Valor Christian — in 2009 as a sophomore and in 2011 as a senior. In the latter, he shot 64-64 at Pelican Lakes and won by eight.
— He qualified for the U.S. Amateur as a 16-year-old in 2010. He ended up making the U.S. Am field five times (2010, ’11, ’13, ’14 and ’16). Ironically, one of the two times he missed out was when the 2012 national championship was held at Cherry Hills, his home course. Clark advanced to the match play round of 32 in his final U.S. Amateur appearance in 2016. That was his eighth USGA championship.
— He was among those who represented Colorado in the Pacific Coast Amateur, in his case as a 16-year-old in 2010.
— In 2010, he finished third in the Western Junior, the oldest national junior tournament in the U.S.
— In 2012, he was one of four winners of the Byron Nelson International Junior Golf Awards.
— He signed with national college powerhouse Oklahoma State and was named the 2014 Big 12 Conference Player of the Year. After transferring to Oregon for his senior season, he also earned the 2017 Pac-12 Conference POY honors.
— He played on the U.S. team at the 2014 Arnold Palmer Cup, the college version of the Ryder Cup.
— He was the top-ranked men’s college player in the nation much of senior season.
— After not earning an individual college title before then, he won three times in his final semester.
— He returned to Boulder Country Club — site of his dramatic 2010 CGA Amateur victory — to win the 2017 Pac-12 individual title. He also led Oregon to the team championship.
— In his final event as a collegian, He helped Oregon advance to the final match of the NCAA Championships. Though the Ducks lost to Oklahoma to finish the national runners-up, Clark won his individual match in the finals.
— He turned pro in 2017 and played in eight PGA Tour events in ’17 and early ’18 — mainly thanks to sponsor exemptions. He made two cuts, finishing as high as 17th in the Sanderson Farms Championship last October.
— Last fall, he earned medalist honors in the Second Stage of Web.com Tour Q-school. In the Final Stage, made a hole-in-one the last round and finished 23rd, earning a Web card for 2018.
— He posted four top-five finishes on the Web.com Tour this year, including placing second in the United Leasing & Finance Championship in April. With $187,817 in prize money, he finished 16th on the Web’s regular-season money list, earning his PGA Tour card for the 2018-19 wraparound season.
JIM KNOUS
— He’s become well known for his ability to go low in big-time competition in Colorado over the years. Besides the final-round 60 at Boulder Country Club in the 2010 CGA Amateur, he’s set competitive course records with a 63 at Heritage Eagle Bend in qualifying for the 2011 U.S. Amateur (Clark also qualified at that site), and a final-round 62 at Green Valley Ranch to finish fourth in the 2016 CoBank Colorado Open. He also fired a 63 at the Rocky Mountain Open in Grand Junction in 2014.
— As a Colorado School of Mines senior in 2012, he finished second in the NCAA Division II national championship, losing in a playoff to Cheyenne’s Josh Creel.
— In his senior season, he posted five individual college victories, including three in a row heading into the national tournament. He was named the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Player of the Year. Oh, and by the way, Knous owns a civil engineering degree from Mines.
— He won in his pro debut at the 2012 Navajo Trail Open in Durango.
— For four consecutive years — 2013 through ’16 — he advanced to U.S. Open Sectionals after going through Local Qualifying at the course now known as Walnut Creek Golf Preserve in Westminster.
— As a budding professional, he won the San Juan Open in Farmington, N.M., in both 2015 and ’16.
— In the fall of 2016, he finished 23rd at the Final Stage of Q-school to earn his Web.com Tour card.
— He Monday qualified into the 2017 Waste Management Phoenix Open, his first PGA Tour start. He missed the cut, but holed a shot from 160 yards for an eagle.
— Last October, he qualified for the Shiners Hospitals for Children Open in Las Vegas and made his first PGA Tour cut, finishing 41st.
— In 50 Web.com Tour starts, he’s recorded four top-10 finishes, three of them coming since mid-July. That includes fourth-place showings in both the Utah Championship and the WinCo Foods Portland Open.
— He earned his 2018-19 PGA Tour card by landing the 25th — and final — spot available through the four-event Web.com Tour Finals.
