Presidents Cup standout Clark ready for first win

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(From left to right) Mike Weir and Angel Cabrera congratulate Tim Clark after he holed an eagle putt on the 18th hole to win his match.

One topic that gets Tim Clark a little riled up is the notion that guys on the PGA TOUR are content to make money, retain their playing privileges and live a pretty comfortable life. Clark said there's nothing farther from the truth, a point he made at The Presidents Cup last week and will pursue this week when he competes in the Justin Timberlake Shriners Hospital for Children's Open.

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"It's like you read in the media how -- I've certainly read it -- that players have it too easy and they go out and they don't want to win tournaments, and they just want to make Top-10s and win a bunch of money," Clark said during The Presidents Cup. "I always kind of shake my head at that. There's only one reason we are out there playing, and that's to get into position to win and win a tournament, and the same goes for this event."

Clark is one of the guys who plays to win, but inexplicably hasn't done it yet.

Clark is one of those players who people assume has won on TOUR. He's been outside of the top 30 money winners only once over the last five years. He just played on his third consecutive Presidents Cup team and has won more than $13 million since joining the PGA TOUR in 2002.

But somehow Clark has managed to miss winning. The South African has entered 193 official events and has finished among the top 25 on 83 occasions, an impressive 43 percent of the time. (Phil Mickelson, for example, is in the top 25 in 54.7 percent of his tournaments.)

Clark came close to that elusive victory earlier this season when he was beaten by Steve Stricker in a playoff in the Crowne Plaza Invitational at Colonial. He was solo second in the 2006 Masters (holing a sand shot on the 72nd hole) and took the silver medal three times in 2007, when he won a career-best $2.6 million.

Because of his stellar performance in last week's Presidents Cup, Clark is starting to garner more attention. The former North Carolina State standout was very steady for Greg Norman's International Team last week at Harding Park. Clark was paired with Vijay Singh in the two Four-ball matches and came away with one victory and one tie. He was paired with Mike Weir in the two Foursome matches, but didn't earn a point. In the match that drew the most notoriety, Clark scorched Zach Johnson in singles, winning five of the first seven holes before settling for a 4-and-3 victory.

"He was 9 under through 15 holes and really didn't have many opportunities for a bogey," Johnson said. "It was really impressive. . . . I'm 5 under and I don't even get to see the last three holes."

Clark's performance was certainly noticed by the national television audience and by NBC commentator Johnny Miller, who made several comments about it being only a matter of time before he finally won a tournament.

Perhaps the win will come this week at the Justin Timberlake Shriners Hospitals for Children Open. Clark is one of four competitors (others are Jim Furyk, Anthony Kim and Hunter Mahan) from The Presidents Cup to compete this week in the second of five Fall Series events. He's had a fair amount of success at the TPC Summerlin course in Las Vegas.

Clark played three events after THE TOUR Championship a year ago, making the cut twice, but wasn't in contention either time. In 2007 he played twice post-East Lake and -- naturally -- finished second in the Children's Miracle Network Classic to end the season.

Once again, despite the fatigue that comes from competing in a month of Playoff events and an international team event, Clark is playing well enough to win. He's not going to fret about it one way or another. As he said after coming close at the 2008 Stanford St. Jude Championship, "Obviously, I would like for it to happen, but it's not something I think about a lot. I feel like I've given myself chances to win. I'm just going to take the position that it's going to happen at some stage. I just need to go out and play and see what happens come the end of the week."

Stan Awtrey is a freelance columnist for PGATOUR.COM. His views do not necessarily reflect the views of the PGA TOUR.