Denver native Wyndham Clark, who has struggled in his quest to regain peak form, parts ways with longtime caddie John Ellis
By Gary Baines – 3/20/2026
Colorado Golf Hall of Famer Wyndham Clark — who won all three of his PGA Tour titles with John Ellis on his bag, including the 2023 U.S. Open — has separated from his longtime caddie.
Clark, a Denver native and Valor Christian High School graduate, used Dave Pelekoudas as his caddie this week at the Valspar Championship in Palm Harbor, Fla. But the part-time Coloradan missed his first PGA Tour cut since November, after rounds of 70-74. Ellis looped for Clark last week at the Players Championship.
“We had a good run,” Clark told Golfweek after round 1. “We both just felt like it was time to move on and we wanted to choose our friendship over the job. It’s been kind of a tough last year of golf and we both mutually were like, ‘Alright, let’s just take a little break and reassess maybe later.’”
Clark and Ellis’ parting of the ways was first reported by Matt Gannon on X.
Ellis, who was an assistant coach at the University of Oregon when Clark closed out his college playing career there, caddied for Clark for about eight years — dating back to the Coloradan’s days on the Korn Ferry Tour.
That included a nine-month stretch in 2023 and ’24 when Clark won three times — the Wells Fargo Championship, the U.S. Open and the ’24 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro Am, where Clark set the course record with a final-round 60.
In the 19 months starting with a 10th-place showing in the 2023 WM Phoenix Open, Clark recorded a very impressive 15 top-10 finishes on the PGA Tour. Especially noteworthy was the stretch from mid-April 2023 to mid-April 2024 when he recorded eight top-3 showings. He won those three times, placed second twice (including at the Players Championship where a 180-degree lip-out kept him from forcing a playoff) and third three times. Clark reached as high as No. 3 in the World Golf Rankings after placing third in the RBC Heritage in 2024, but now stands at No. 67.
After Clark’s remarkable run that concluded with a top 10 in the 2024 Tour Championship, he’s struggled to maintain that stellar level.
In the last 18 months (September 2024-now), Clark has posted just two top-10s in 32 official PGA Tour events — a fourth in the 2025 British Open and fifth at the 2025 Texas Children’s Houston Open. And it certainly didn’t help that two temper-related incidents involving Clark took place at major championships in 2025, drawing considerable attention.
“When things aren’t going great and I care more about Wyndham and I’s friendship … we’re friends before business — and things just weren’t right,” Ellis said on Sirius XM’s Gravy & The Sleeze Show, co-hosted by former Fort Collins resident Drew Stoltz. “Something had to give and it felt like it was just time; a different voice for both of us would help.
“If I get on Instagram, it looks like there’s a lot of hatred, but there’s no hatred for Wyndham and I. We are still friends. We texted yesterday, it’s all good,” Ellis said. “It’s part of the business and I’m going to still root for him and surely he will root for me, whatever I do after this.”
At the Valspar, Clark said his caddie situation, “As of right now, I’m taking one week at a time, giving Big Wave (Pelekoudas) a two-week trial. He’s a good friend and I know he’s a good caddie. I said I’ll give him two weeks for sure and then reassess after that.”
About the Writer: Gary Baines has covered golf in Colorado continuously since 1983. He was a sports writer at the Daily Camera newspaper in Boulder, then the sports editor there, and has written regularly for ColoradoGolf.org since 2009. The University of Colorado Evans Scholar alum was inducted into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame in 2022. He owns and operates ColoradoGolfJournal.com