One of the most popular invitees to this year’s Nedbank Golf Challenge for the
hordes of South African fans who flock to Sun City will be the diminutive Tim Clark.
Coming off a fantastic Presidents Cup – his third appearance – in which he
was the International team’s stand-out player and trounced former Masters champion
Zach Johnson in the singles, Clark has earned his third invitation to Sun City with yet
another consistent year in which he made 17 out of 21 cuts on the PGA Tour, posted a
scoring average of under 70, earned just on $2 million and took his career earnings on the
Tour past the $13 million mark.
A PGA Tour win still eludes him, but there can be little doubt that a victory is not
far off as Clark continues to impress in the most elevated of company. In the Sony Open in
Hawaii, his first tournament of the year, the Umkomaas professional fired a final-day 64
to finish in a tie for 12th and then took his good form to the five-round Bob Hope Classic
the following week, where five rounds in the 60s – including a third-round 63 –
gave him a share of fifth place.
Buoyed by his excellent ball striking and a deadly broomstick putter, Clark despatched
the world number one Tiger Woods by 4 and 2 in the second round of the WGC Accenture World
Match-play before losing to fellow Nedbank Golf Challenge competitor Rory McIlroy in the
following round.
A final round of 69 on the demanding TPC course at Sawgrass was good enough to earn him
a top-10 finish in the Players Championship, but he will probably feel that he let his
best opportunity for a Tour victory get away from him at the Crowne Plaza Invitational.
With a one-stroke lead playing the final hole, Clark recorded a closing bogey to fall
back into a share of the lead with Steve Stricker and Steve Marino, with the trio going
back down the 18th hole for a sudden-death playoff. Clark appeared to have dismissed the
disappointment of missing out in regulation play when he hit his approach on the first
playoff hole to within seven feet of the flag, but unfortunately he could not convert the
putt and had to carry on against Stricker.
His approach to the second playoff hole hit the flagstick and bounced some 20 feet
away. His birdie attempt missed, allowing Stricker an opening to hole for birdie and the
victory. It was Clark’s seventh runner-up position on the PGA Tour.
His first appearance in the Nedbank Challenge coincided with South Africa’s
hosting of the Presidents Cup in 2003 when the field was expanded to 18 players, but it
was in 2005 that Clark defied those who believed he didn’t have the game to compete
on the long Gary Player Country Club layout. Clark finished two shots out of a four-man
playoff that was ultimately won by Jim Furyk, his final round of 75 disappointingly
putting paid to his challenge after a third round of 67 had given him a share of the
54-hole lead.
The two-time SA Open champion had his first hole-in-one at the tender age of eight and
it was clear from an early age that his golf was going to take him to great heights.
Having experienced the Masters for the first time as an amateur in 1998, having won the US
Public Links Championship a year earlier, he was destined to return and finished second
behind Phil Mickelson as a professional in 2006. | 
