Wyndham Clark's already brutal 2026 PGA Championship took a frightening turn on Friday afternoon at Aronimink when the 2023 U.S. Open champion sent an errant second shot from a patchy lie on the par-4 11th careening into a television camera roughly 10 yards from impact, narrowly missing a cluster of spectators that included a young girl seated near the fairway.
Footage that quickly circulated online showed the ball ricocheting off the camera with a thud, the operator absorbing the strike, while patrons jerked back instinctively. A young girl squatted to the ground in the immediate aftermath. The audio captured on-course reactions of alarm.
'Is everyone ok?' one onlooker can be heard saying as the ball stops moving. 'Or did he hit the camera?' another asks. 'It was the camera,' a third confirms. 'Oh my God,' came a fourth voice.
No injuries were reported. The cameraman remained on his feet and the spectators around him appeared unharmed. A young patron present, Abigail Grace, posted online afterwards that she was fine, writing simply, 'great shot i'm Ok thanks.'
Clark, the 2023 U.S. Open champion and 2024 Players Championship winner, was already deep in the wrong half of the leaderboard at the time of the incident. He went on to miss the cut at the 108th edition of golf's second major. As of late Friday night he had not posted any public comment about the camera strike on his social media accounts.
The 11th at Aronimink, a 462-yard par 4, has been one of the most punishing holes on the redesigned A.W. Tillinghast layout this week. Pin locations there over the first two rounds left players short-siding themselves on a green that falls away on multiple lines, while the rough framing the fairway has been thick enough to grab clubs and turn approach shots loose. Clark's wayward second was not the only spectator scare on the property this week, but it was the most graphic visual evidence of the danger posed by errant second shots into a packed gallery.
It was the second concerning moment involving a professional and a person inside the ropes at this PGA Championship. On Thursday, Jon Rahm hit a volunteer in the face with a divot after his second shot from the rough — an incident Rahm described as making him feel sick afterwards. 'I couldn't feel any worse,' Rahm said.
In Clark's case the projectile was the ball itself, traveling at full speed. Camera operators on tour wear no protective equipment and routinely set up within 15 yards of the playing line, particularly on holes where the broadcast wants a tight head-on shot of approach play. Their proximity to elite players, who are increasingly capable of dispersion misses in the 30-yard range when they catch a flier from rough, has drawn attention from competitors in recent years.
For Clark the broader context of the week was already grim. The 31-year-old American had arrived at Aronimink ranked outside the world's top 25 for the first time in two years, his form a long way from the high water mark of his 2023 U.S. Open triumph at Los Angeles Country Club. He has spoken openly this season about working with sports psychologist Julie Elion to manage emotional volatility on the course, and the camera mishit, however accidental, will not have helped a player already searching for confidence.
The PGA of America did not issue a public statement on the incident. Clark and his caddie moved on to play out the hole, finished the round and packed for an early flight home. He will have plenty of time to reflect on a major where his ball did at least one thing that mattered: it missed everyone who could have been hurt.