Tim Clark needs this elusive first PGA Tour win of his career, but he wasted a great chance by failing to take the Crowne Plaza International title on Sunday.
Clark has finished second six times on the Tour, including this tournament last year, where he was beaten when Phil Mickelson birdied the final hole.
Everyone appreciates how consistent he is, he has a major game, puts it on the green and doesn’t make too many mistakes. But really, you have to win.
I thought that the chances of Clark winning in Texas depended on how many greens he hit on his final round on Sunday.
He is not a great chipper, so if he hit 15 greens out of 18 he was going to win. Thirteen or less and he probably wouldn’t, and yet he went out and put pressure on himself from the start by missing early fairways. He only hit six of the first ten, which was worse than any of his other rounds.
He started with a birdie, but hole one is reckoned to be the easiest hole, dropped a shot at three and got lucky at five by missing the fairway to leave himself a second long shot.
The Trinity River is over there, so it is one shot where you do not want to be missing the fairway, and there are a lot of trees as well.
He made the score he should have from there, with a five, but was lucky to get away with it.
The aspect of his game I really worry about is his putting. I noticed that he takes the putter back, or maybe a little inside, the way you as a golfer would want to. But then he cuts across the ball a little bit, and hits across the toe.
This is going to cause the ball to go offline some of the time. On a left to right putt, there is a tendency to miss it on the low side. If you add a little right hand to the putt, it will pull a little left. If you go ahead with a straight hand, with the cutting across it will drift to the right.
It is obvious that his putting strip is not looking that great, and his use of the long putter suggests that putting is not his strength.