When Wyndham Clark took a drop after finding his ball embedded in the third fairway at Bay Hill last week, social media wasted absolutely no time in labelling him a cheater. Part of the reason for that was that a year earlier at Bay Hill, cameras captured Clark aggressively patting down the rough behind his ball on the 18th hole, seemingly improving his lie.

Clark was penalised in neither situation, which only makes the internet cries grow louder. A true “he can’t keep getting away with this!!” Jesse Pinkman situation.

On Wednesday at the Players Championship, the former U.S. Open winner was asked if he saw any of the internet hate, and whether or not he cares about the c-word allegations.

“Obviously I found out after the round. I have a few comments on this rule in general,” Clark said. “But I didn’t know — so I approached scoring and they approached me like, ‘hey, there’s something that’s going to come up in media about what happened on 3.’ I was like, on 3? I hit it in the middle of the fairway, hit it on the green and two-putt. I’m like, what are you talking about. He goes, it’s your drop.

“I was like, what do you mean, did I do an improper drop? He said, well, we didn’t know if you were plugged. Long story short is you’re okay.”

Clark says that they then showed him the video clip that was making the rounds, which led him to wonder how the hell he was supposed to know if it was his own pitch mark or not.

“We were 300 some yards away,” he said. “The ball just hit — we didn’t see the ball bounce from our distance, and we get up there and it’s plugged. How was I supposed to know? No one told us.

“So my frustration was that if I did get stroked, how is that my fault when no one told me that I rolled into something — if I did roll into someone else’s pitch mark. That’s one of those rules in golf where it’s like, why are we making this so complicated? I can’t see that, and if the volunteers don’t tell me and I get stroked for something that I didn’t know happened, it kind of seems unfair.”

Clark was vindicated in a statement from the PGA Tour Rules Committee after the round, and he insisted on Wednesday that there was no chicanery.

“I am glad that it was correct because I wasn’t trying to cheat by any means. We just walked up, ball was plugged, took an embedded ball rule.”

Main Image: Gregory Shamus