By Rich Winter 

605 Sports

Following his seventh-grade basketball season, Sioux Falls golfer Colton Clark sat his parents down and told them he wanted to concentrate on golf full time. 

While the news stung for his parents Cat and Bria, both basketball playing parents, Clark knew golf was the sport he wanted to pursue. 

“I just had a talk with my parents and told them I wanted to be all in with golf,” Clark said. “I’m not tired after basketball practice anymore and I can work on my game all year long.” 

A typical week finds Clark playing at least six-to-seven days a week and entering as many as three tournaments. After each tournament Clark will find time to golf nine to 18 holes with his buddies. After that he heads to the family garage where he works on a golf simulator. 

“He works relentlessly,” said Cat Clark, who is Colton’s father and the Assistant Manager for Sioux Falls Golf. “It is a pretty regular occurrence where I have to tell him to get off the simulator and come to bed.” 

All that work is paying off for a youngster that started playing the game at age three and had his first birdie at age seven. He started the year with a 10.6 handicap and is all the way down to a 3.1 handicap. 

Clark has sprouted from a spindly 5-foot-7 to a lanky 6-foot-3 in a year’s time. While the growth spurt might throw some junior golfers off, the Clark’s actually anticipated the height increase.

“I actually got fitted for clubs last year with this predicted growth spurt,” Colton Clark said. 

The extra height has helped Clark off the tee who regularly drives the ball 325 yards and even drove two par 4s at a tournament this summer at the Lone Tree Golf Course in Arizona. 

A growth spurt in the last 12-months has helped Colton Clark improve his long game where a typical drive is now well over 300 yards - Courtesy Photo

“As I play these bigger tournaments the tee-boxes keep moving back,” he said. “Hitting the ball further just helps in so many ways.” 

Clark said the only drawback to growing so fast is the Osgood-Schlatter disease that makes his knees hurt when he’s walking a course.

The results this summer have been promising. 

At the tournament in Arizona, featuring 29 golfers from five states, Clark finished in seventh place despite battling some fatigue and heat exhaustion on a 117-degree day. 

“He was right in the thick of things until the heat got to him on the 14th and 15th holes,” Cat Clark said. 

That was the first time Clark had competed in those kinds of conditions and he plans to chalk up that outing as experience gained. 

“I just felt a lot of fatigue,” he said. “You start thinking about how you are doing and then you start thinking about how everyone else is doing. It takes a toll on a person both mentally and physically.” 

Clark also finished seventh in the Notah Begay qualifier in Spearfish, playing on the Elkhorn Ridge Golf Club. In addition to local tournaments he also participated in the Optimist Qualifier played on the Central Valley Golf Course in Hartford. 

Last summer Clark won the local Drive, Chip & Putt tournament then played in a regional tournament in New Ulm, Minnesota, where he just missed qualifying to play on the Augusta National Golf Club. 

“Someday I want to be walking down the fairway and playing in the Masters,” he said. “If that doesn’t work out I want to stick with golf in some capacity for the rest of my life.”

Clark knows he’s blessed to be able to play golf every day on any of the 12 courses in the Sioux Falls metro area. He’s also appreciative of the people that help him fine-tune his game.”

“Every time I need a little adjustment I work with Danny Sinksen who is the Director of Player Development for Sioux Falls Golf,” he said. “Honestly I have to give huge credit to my parents and coaches for pushing me to be good.”

Clark has been a member of the Sioux Falls Lincoln golf team each of the past two years. While he’s eager to take on a more prominent role on his high school golf team, he’s relishing the rest of a busy summer schedule. 

On Tuesday, Clark played in the Drive, Chip & Putt local qualifier. On Wednesday, he’ll be playing at the Kuehn par-three tournament. Thursday sees the youngster playing a tournament at the Baker Crossing Golf Course. After practicing on Friday, Clark will play in the Sioux Falls City Championship.