Warming Up with Wyndham Clark

Wyndham Clark is the reigning U.S. Open champ. He holds the course record at Pebble Beach. And he’s a top-5 player in the world. He also has a fascinating driving-range routine that includes teed-up wedge shots, intense visualization and 330-yard nukes*. We might not be able to replicate that driving distance. But the rest? Maybe we can find some inspiration. Enjoy!

(*It’s important to note that no golfers were harmed in the making of this video.)
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oh that might hit people uh oh four right four yeah I guess we’re little close sorry I forgot uh sorry I didn’t realize everyone’s still standing I thought I thought when you were saying that you were like oh we’re on number five I mean I holy smokes totally forgot sorry hey maybe we’ll hit three-wood wendam Clark is about to be on the tea with us we’re at TR North in Scottdale but we are getting Windam at a really good time he’s gearing up for major championship season he’s having a moment top five player in the world but I don’t think I know that much about his process yet we’ve heard about the work he’s done in uh in the mental game but specifically how that translates to the way he gets ready for golf rounds I’m excited to learn a little bit more so we’ve got Windam taking us through his bag and gearing up for a round of golf right now a warming [Music] up wendam thanks for warming up with us yeah thanks for having me see you so I want you to just take us through it I want you to walk us through your process here there’s some stuff that maybe you would have done before a typical round that you haven’t done this morning like maybe you haven’t gotten a full pump in I don’t know like what does that pre- range process look like uh yeah as far as warmup goes I you know I give myself about an hour and 10 minutes before I I Peg it on the first tea and you know that’s hitting balls chipping and putting and then before that it’s another 30 minutes in the gym okay where it is more of a like muscle activation I’m actually doing somewhat of workout trying to get a good sweat the heart rate going to where if I had to go straight to the first tea I could cuz my body’s super warm and ready so I would have done that what kind of stuff is that is that just like like just curls and bench like just Glory muscles or what what are you doing in there uh it is not just curls and bench uh yeah just look good for the girls out there no um it is a lot of like making sure that I activate you know activate the glutes let’s go um but it’s it’s making sure that all the muscles that you kind of use in the uh body for for golf are all like kind of firing and going so I do a lot of core I do a lot of stuff for like me personally for back so that my posture is really good um a lot of rotational stuff a lot of stuff for the glutes and hamstrings and then a lot of explosive stuff cuz golf contrary to maybe some belief it is an explosive sport sport you know you’re pretty still and then you set up and then you swing in 125 mph um and so I try to you know work that out in the gym so that my body’s ready to go and can be swinging fast and doing everything I need got it and then what club did you just grabed so I always start if it’s a warmup for round I always start with a gap wedge uh my 51 degree and I kind of set up this little te drill and this has kind of become my thing you know I don’t have a swing coach um and so I work on it myself and this is this is my swing coach and so what I do here is I Tee It Up Every time for two reasons to for ball position and and set up so that I always am trying to start it neutral and then the other thing is the tea is huge for me to make sure I don’t get too Steep and so I tend to be Steep and so Under Pressure I get down like this I start swinging really left big divots Swip cuts and so what I’m trying to do here is neutralize that and be the opposite so then when I get into competition it’s in where I want to be so I’ll start out here cool yeah hit us a couple yeah let’s start out here and like what I try to do is pick it and almost hit a high draw knowing that kind of once you get on the course it’s not going to be a high draw yeah exactly so okay exactly so I’m trying to be really you know really shallow um and this is just kind of you know you know I set up and especially with the wedge at the beginning I just am trying to feel okay how’s my body moving um you know am I hitting the high draw and if I’m if I’m doing that um then I know okay we’re swinging actually pretty good yeah and then if I come out here and it seems like I’m hitting Cuts or pulls or pushes I go okay is it ball position is it um where is this gap wedge in your stance so pretty much dead dead middle of the stance as much as possible um and so I’ll just hit some shots and I’m just really going okay you know that one was a good one there started right on my line felt nice release and so I’ll do this with let’s see I think it’s like six clubs in my bag and I’ll hit about anywhere from 5 to 7 with each one and that’s literally just getting a baseline for every Club so I’ll go from this yeah what do yeah give us gap wedge then I’ll go to like a nine iron then a seven iron here hit us hit us a couple seven irons here in that in that same process and yeah and it’s always always teed up so it’s everyone always gives me weird looks like you’re hitting a wedge off a tea and how did you figure that out so this happened about a year and a half ago um that’s pure yeah that one was nice um this happened a year and a half ago when I did decide to go on my own yeah I reached out to some swing coaches that I um really um respect and admire and I know they know the swing and I just said hey what do you think of my swing and they one of the guys that I really trusted said I think your ball position’s too far up and I think you need to feel like you hit tight draws and that’s what my caddy John and I both agreed with but it was nice to see someone say that and so I said okay what’s the best way for me to do that and John and I both came up with all right let’s just put it on a tea and pick it off the te and also for ball position let’s just make sure it never gets up too far up so we are always working on that so that’s kind of how it started and we’ve been doing it for a year and a half and you know I went from being I don’t know 150th or 60th in Strokes gained approach to now top 30 or 40 so so funny all this attention that we and you guys paid like oh who’s the perfect swing coach for these guys and for you um say I guess you found him oh yeah yeah it’s it’s myself how many did you go through before then I uh unfortunately went through a lot um I let’s see as a pro I worked with two guys pretty consistently for about five years and then in that I saw maybe two or three other guys just to get information and then in college I worked with a few guys and so I’ve seen a lot and in that though I learned a lot too I learned you know things that worked for me I learned a lot about the golf swing trackman all that stuff in other words it might not have worked if you had just gone out on your own straight away it’s not like oh I should have done this right away you learned some things that maybe you can now tap into for sure I mean I have to give those guys credit um they really made you know a lot of my swing really technically sound it’s just I was missing the one component which was you know control of the club face and and the ball flight and so my swing aesthetically looked nice and I hit a lot of great angles and everyone always said man your swing’s so nice you know have such a beautiful swing but I didn’t know where the golf ball is going and I think when I owned it myself I really learned I was like okay you know what you know why is that and then that’s when I weakened my grip and got my club face more open which most people are like you know trying to get the club face really Square to shut and I’m trying to get it more open because then it helps me hit my cut and so I figured out a lot of things on my own and then that’s to answer your question yeah I think those guys laid the foundation and then now I’m able to do it on my own hell yeah all right hit us one more of these and we’ll keep moving up in clubs here perfect doing too much jabbering not enough progression [Music] here all right wait so that’s a seven iron and then you would just keep going what you’d go five iron next yeah you go five iron and then I’d go to my two iron three iron or three Freewood and then driver let’s see a couple of these two irons and so I do all this just to get um like make sure I mean this ball position changes a little bit obviously it’s it’s a two iron so it’s a little more up in my stance but I want to make sure it’s not too far up and I’m still trying to do the same thing hit a little draw holy cow that thing comes out like a rocket huh yeah that it’s a it’s a hot club that’s for sure how long have you had that club that this is I’ve kind of played a two in my whole career this one specifically it’s been actually the start of this year this was a new one I put in in Palm Springs your freshman youo nice yeah and are you thinking about anything besides like contact right now in terms of how the ball looks you want maybe a little draw you want to see a little right to left but yeah it’s I’m thinking start line I’m thinking mainly contact and just kind of how my body moves and so like I’ll go from here to a 3-wood then to a driver and it’s literally just to get my Baseline so I think of it as if someone that’s putting on a mirror every day like for putting you check everything to make sure it’s right and then you go off of it and so that’s what I do is this is my mirror and this tells me where my swings at and then what I’ll do is I’ll take it off the te here shortly and then I’ll start hitting shots so all right if you want I’ll go to like a three wood perfect that’s pretty damn good yeah not too and pretty straight uh yeah I mean I typically off the te when I’m doing this it doesn’t actually curve too much yeah have you been able to hit it big for forever like since you were a kid as far as distance yeah I uh I didn’t hit my grow spurt really till end of high school okay um but at uh I was pretty little when I was uh not saying I’m big by any means but I was really short when my freshman sophomore year but I played other sports and so I I I going to say you were playing basketball too right yeah um I was playing basketball and I I just I gained a lot of speed through all that trying to hit it far and then as I grew it really then that’s when I really got all my speed so it’s kind of in high school so I would do that hit a little bit of drivers and then I take it off the tea put it on the dirt and now I start hitting shots so so now I’ll go at a flag and I’ll try to hit little Cuts little draws and I’ll prepare myself for the day so I know okay I’m going to have wedges where I need to take off some I need to add some and then I’ll go to Iron same thing so it’s it’s kind of a so what’s your target here with your uh your first wedge so I’m going at this orange flag and the wind’s off the left which you always got to be conscious of the wind so you know that it’s not you it’s the wind moving the ball y so I’ll be aiming just left and I’m just trying to hit a small little cut to it and when you’re hitting a cut uh do you make any adjustments or like in terms of uh ball position or anything or that that’s just like your natural shot shape so if you don’t do anything then it’s just going to cut yeah so what I try to do is that t setup that I just had where balls really neutral that’s aimed right at where you know train tracks right at the flag and I’m trying to hit very straight to the little draw what I’ll do is i’lljust that left the target the ball Position will go up a fraction tiny bit a tiny bit and then what I just try to feel is that I just keep that face open to to the path and so as I’m set up here to hit another cut so I feel like I’m left of the left of the Target and then I just try to hold the face just a little bit to hit a nice little cut like that sweet yeah woo right on it yeah so then I would do that and then John typically is the one that’s kind of guiding some of this is he’ll be like all right now let’s hit a tight draw we need you know we need five extra yards or something are you thinking about oh this is for uh 15 the approach shots going to be 110 yards and we’ll go through shots where he’s like okay today on you know it’s all assuming we hit the t-ball exactly where we want and we’re in the Fairway but he’s like okay we’re going to have it’s back left pin on you know whatever hole and he goes we’re going to have 148 and I’m hitting my pitching wedge 144 that week so he goes we need F four to five extra yards I’ll hit a tight draw to try to gain that extra yardage and so I’ll set up and kind of visualize the shot all right so say that’s what have you picked a flag here yeah so we’ll um we’ll go with that black which is just a little r of it so I’ll be aiming at the green one and you know it’s going to be tough with this one off the left but I’ll come in and I’ll feel okay this feels pretty good and so I’ll feel like a pretty good size draw to get it nice yeah look at you you got that draw left going into the wind even yeah I’m actually swinging better than I thought it would this morning but yeah so we we just do that and we go through the different clubs throughout the bag and so you know go to a mid iron or yeah let’s do it long iron so let’s see we’ll go to a like a six iron okay and so we’ll do the same thing so now how far does six iron go it’s this club is so funny no matter where we go it’s always 200 yards like the weirdest thing that’s just your benchmark six iron just goes 200 it’s so funny I mean it could be at 1,000 ft you know or at Pebble Beach and it’s cold it seems to always go 200 so now we’re going to the blue flag I usually always start by hitting a little cut all right blue flag with a little cut and so you like to work the ball you’re not a guy that’s going to hit the exact same shot shape every time and you’re just going to hit at you know three yard cut every single shot yeah so I mean obviously that’s let’s say 70 75% of the time I I’m hitting Cuts but I do like to work the ball it kind of stops when I get to the 54 iron those are less likely to be working it both ways I kind of just choose hitting good contact in a consistent shape but from six iron down I mean to add yardage take off yardage get to certain pins I’m either cutting it hitting straight drawing it whatever it is so I think it makes it a little more fun too when you’re trying to shape shots it helps your misses do you like to ride the wind with your shot shape or would you rather hold it off Against the Wind um it’s a good question I I guess it depends on I you know what’s funny is I I bet I bet I ride the wind more than I hold it and that might be contrary to some people I don’t really know what they do but I feel like anytime I try to fight the wind I always hit I get bigger misses versus if I ride the wind it’s kind of always working the direction of where the wind’s going yeah and like I’ll give you an example if the wind’s off the left and it’s a left pin you know a lot of people are like all right let’s hit a draw well if my Miss with the draw is I come out of it so I would come out of it block it wind takes it now I’m so far right that you’re in a bad spot versus if I said okay you know what maybe I should aim a little bit left and hit a tight like straight ball or a cut now it starts left of the flag and it’s working towards the flag and maybe a little way but never way over here and so that’s kind of that’s kind of what I’ve done you know I went to school in Oklahoma we played with a lot of wind that’s right and it seemed like that always worked out better than I guess it’s like we want your ball like above the hole breaking towards it rather than like once you get below the hole breaking away from it you’re in trouble 100% yeah I always feel like I’m working towards the pin and when you’re working against the wind I mean there there are times you do it don’t don’t get me wrong but um I usually lean towards riding the wind so you have a favorite Golf Club um yeah you know what’s funny is I love my nine iron I don’t know what it is most people the nine can be like a forgotten Club in there I feel like most people love a seven iron they love yeah you know whatever a driver 3-wood nine iron I just feel like I can do anything with the club so it’s kind of the first Club in your bag that you can actually start to see shot shapes so you know wedges you’re not really curving the ball that much and then with a nine iron I feel like I can curve it I can hit it low I can hit it high I can take off a lot The Loft for some reason just looks good to me and so I always get excited when I have a N9 I feel like I’m going to hit it close and when do you do you consciously dial up like the club twirl or is that just something that happens I don’t Club twirl much I but when you do it’s aggressive and you do it with intention yeah I mean I we’ll say Obviously the one at the US Open was completely like an unconscious motion like I did not you know in the air go oh I’m going a club twirl it just I was so into the shot and it just happened and I didn’t even know I did it until afterwards people was like oh I club twirled or and they showed me and I go wow that was pretty epic Club but I didn’t even know so I really don’t uh it’s kind of one of those things where you’re so into the shot it just happens and it could be a little bit through osmosis of watching tiger growing up and you just saw him do it in big moments and maybe my subconscious just like hey when you hit a good shot in big moment that’s what you do that’s what you do God that’s cool do you have a favorite golf shot that you’ve ever hit yeah I’ve had a few um you know a lot of them seem to be happening happening uh recently yeah you had some good ones these last few weeks yeah that I’d say at that US Open I mean that eight iron that hit the flag on Saturday was where I did Club TL was was pretty awesome just cuz I bogey the hole before it was so big to have a good hole in 18 to get into that final group I had dark yeah I had momentum going into Sunday um so that was big and then probably that three-wood you know three-wood off the deck for me growing up was always a really hard club for me to hit and so I’ve never just been really comfortable Hitting 3-wood off the deck and you know in that hitting that in that moment on 14 with the pressure and pulling off that shot was was definitely something that I really look at as one of the better shots in my career so that was an incredible shot yeah [Music] all right now that we’ve gotten you fully out of your routine but you still absolutely ped that one all right what’s next you want to go back to a long iron here yeah so 6 hour I mean we would then go to I we’d start hitting some some woods and some t- shots so I mean if you want I can go to driver for sure and see what we’ll typically do is you know John will start off and he’ll say okay we’re on the let’s hit the T on like we’ll go to tough tball yeah so he’ll be like all right um you know let’s go to the we just played players you’d be like all right t-ball on the fifth hole kind of a tough shot and he’s he’s like it’s going to be in off the left and so I’m imagining that shot like okay I want to hit a low cut in off the left and so I’ll set up and I’ll kind of have my parameters and I’ll try to basically replicate that shot so when I get there I’ve already done it oh that might hit people uh-oh four right four yeah I guess we’re a little close S I forgot uh sorry I didn’t realize sorry everyone’s still standing I thought I thought when you were saying that you were like oh we’re on number five I mean holy smokes totally forgot sorry hey maybe we’ll hit three-wood no I think that might still too far here I’ll go further left and I’ll hit it soft I thought you were still in your bit that you were at TPC Saw Grass and you’re like that might hit someone in the crowd that you literally meant that guy in the white quarter zip down there no that was a perfect tall no you smoked it I just smoked the fair all right so let’s go like a tough t- ball at players for me you know as me being a cutter typically is the second t-shot at the Players you have to kind of hit a draw and so we’ll we’ll go to that and I’ll hit a um I’ll work on hitting a draw nice and so he’ll say all right T you know the wind’s in off the right which helps a draw and he’s like we needed to draw about 15 yards and then I hit a snap hook way left but what what what we’ll do is we’ll essentially just work on the shots how involved are your hands when you’re like trying to hit a draw say are you trying to do it mostly with like path and with setup or are you doing anything with your hands yeah I I would say just because typically drawing it is tougher for me I probably have to get a little bit of hands involved but definitely set up so I’m I’m right of my target my path is out to the right and I’m just trying to have that face be shut to the path okay but I definitely feel like that extra little draw does come from a little bit of a Active Release with the hands yeah um versus you know some guys that naturally draw it they probably try to take that out of there right so there we go perfect there’s no one standing over there yeah we’re better over there now you’ve got a long iron into number two at Saw Grass yeah can you hit me one of those two irons just uh like full send like 18th t- shot at Saw Grass yeah so that one yeah so you know that t that t- ball um is also another tough one you can’t really as much as you want to block it and not hit in the water that’s really how you make big numbers and bogey so you kind of have to challenge the shot and so you know that one all week people were you know commenting like oh you why aren’t you hitting driver 3-wood and trying to send it up there I just didn’t feel comfortable I I wanted to give myself a chance from the Fairway and I’m a pretty good mid- iron to Long iron player so I I left my you know I just kind of played to my game so here tried to hit which the shot I was trying to hit which was a kind of middle back stance trying to hit a trap draw oh God that that’s low and is that’s the height that you like to hit that off the te if I’m trying to draw it if you’re trying to draw it yeah cuz I like to keep it low sick yeah so it doesn’t get out of play so I did that really good most actually almost every day I hit this club twice and then a forearm twice all in the Fairway well and I kept kind of wondering watching you it’s like God this this guy’s kind of leaving himself like pretty far in on some of these long par fours but then you kept hitting like 205 yard six irons to like 8 ft so then it was like that’s kind of hard to second guess yeah I mean you know obviously it’s high Insight 2020 but in the stats say whatever but I’ve just learned in my career in golf that whatever I feel most comfortable and whatever my eye sees is the correct play versus what everyone else is doing or what the stats say yeah cuz sometimes when I push the envelope and that’s what you’re supposed to do I sometimes tend to get bad results and so on that hole I just have never felt good hitting three with a driver obviously if the wind was into you’d have to but it just felt like an iron all week and I left myself anywhere from a pitching wedge to a six iron and I parred the whole every every day which is probably gaining on the field so made like three and a half on Sunday yeah three yeah exactly so then sometimes too you know I hit this club into into the green so then I’ll put it more up on my St try to hit a cut and kind of send one in the air cool so that I mean it’s still like pretty penetrating that’s still kind of a bullet but it’s higher and softer for sure than the other one how far is that going um this is one of those other clubs that goes the same distance almost every time it’s like 248 to 250 so if I try to hit the low one obviously doesn’t fly as much but it rolls more but if I hit that shot yeah it’s always right around 250 into par fives um or sometimes off the te as well how do you wrap up your warmup like what do you so some guys have to yeah make putts before they finish or you know you have to hit the last three-pointer before you finish your warmup so I play the first hole okay so we do all that stuff we’re playing all the holes that are important and then I get to okay let’s play the first hole so we start with the T ball then I hit the second shot and then once we do that we’re like all right sweet let’s go and then I’ll walk over about 10 minutes prior to my tea time hit 3 four minutes of putts just to get that feel back make sure the speed’s good and then you’re off let’s play the first tollet Augusta uh cuz you were just there Drive were’re probably going to keep out of your hands but we could say that you hit the Fairway if you want and just start with your approach shot how far do you have in so I actually probably would hit three-wood on the first hole and then from there it’s probably depending on the Wind be an eight or seven iron um let’s just say I mean I really you got 170 left or something let’s go 170 that front left pin um so what I’ll do is we’re just kind of yeah hopefully it’s Center a fairway and it’s a front left pin you can’t miss left there so I’m going to try to start this ball in my mind you know kind of at the center to right center of the green and draw it into the flag and um and if it doesn’t draw then I’m putting up the hill 20 ft so so yeah I mean it was a kind of I mean a it probably a 5 yard draw the wind held a little bit but so you hit that shot and you go okay perfect and you just walk right to the te and you already have hit the shot you feel good and you hopefully just replicate what you did on the Range you get nervous on the first whole of every tournament yeah I always have the first two Jitters I mean regardless even if you pipe one and B start off with the birdie that’s just part of I mean that’s what you want that’s the excitement that’s what we love about the game and competing so I always kind of have the Jitters maybe the first couple holes and then then you kind of get into it and then that’s when you really get comfortable and hopefully start hitting some and then you get nervous again at the end like kind of lows it does it it does it it especially you know if you have a good round going or you get to a tough te ball you know your excitement gets up a little bit and you know for me those last three holes that the players I mean my heart was out of my chest the whole time and you’re super excited and you have the fans and the crowd and the whole atmosphere and obviously trying to win a tournament that you’re just you’re I mean I could probably PR in every physical workout if I could and yet you’re still trying to control your distances so that’s something that you learn as a pro it’s kind of challenging but um but yeah Windom thanks for warming up with us appreciate it thank you [Music]