Wyndham Clark mom Lise Clark died on August 2, 2013, at 55 after stage 4 metastatic breast cancer spread throughout her body. The loss came after she had once been declared cancer-free, and it left Clark without the person he said kept him grounded.
Clark said his mother remained his motivation for playing. He also said he no longer had her to go to after she passed, and that made it tough to handle what came next.
Lise Clark’s cancer timeline
The timeline explains why the loss carried so much weight. Lise Clark was first diagnosed with cancer in 1997, six months after Brendan was born in June 1997, then was declared cancer-free in 2001 before the disease returned in 2012 as stage 4 breast cancer four days before Christmas.
Doctors told her radiation, chemotherapy and surgery were not an option after that 2012 diagnosis. She died the next year, at age 55, after the cancer spread throughout her body.
Wyndham Clark’s mother and golf
Clark has described the role his mother played in plain terms. In Golf Digest, he wrote that he was lucky to have athletic genes, and he said his dad played some professional tennis while his mom could throw a perfect spiral and beat her family in pingpong.
He also wrote that his mother transformed into a woman who was Miss New Mexico USA in 1981, and that no one supported him more than she did. In, he said she kept him grounded when things were tough or when they were going great, bringing him up or keeping the high going.
That history also shaped the pressure he felt at home. Clark said his father was a professional tennis player, that dads can put a lot of pressure on their kids when they excel, and that he felt a lot of pressure from Randall Clark as well.
Julie Elion and Brendan
Julie Elion said the mother was the glue in the family and was probably very encouraging to Wyndham. She added that the relationship with his father was a little different, and that it has come full circle as he starts to feel that with his dad.
For Clark, the practical effect of the loss was simple and immediate: the person he leaned on most was gone. His own words point to the part of the story that still drives him, because he said he did not have his mom to go to after she passed.
