'Honor My Mom': Wyndham Clark's Mom Introduced Him to Golf Before 2013 Death — Now He's U.S. Open Champ (Exclusive)

Wyndham Clark tells PEOPLE he got texts from Peyton Manning, Charles Barkley, Christian McCaffrey, Michael Peña and others after his first major tournament win

The moment was a long time coming for Wyndham Clark.

The golfer, 29, capped off an emotional weekend at the U.S. Open, winning his first major championship since turning pro in 2017 with a short putt to close out a “dream” weekend at the Los Angeles Country Club.

“Once it went in, it was just waterworks and everything kind of hit me at once,” Clark tells PEOPLE. “Just all the times I've dreamt about doing this, and how hard I've worked, and how many obstacles I've faced, to finally break through and do something like this was amazing.”

Clark’s win on Sunday came just weeks after he notched his first PGA Tour victory at the Wells Fargo Championship at the Quail Hollow Club in North Carolina, sparking a hot streak that culminated at the U.S. Open.

“It was honestly a dream come true,” says the Denver native, who this week is being whisked around New York City for interviews and television appearances. “It's definitely been a whirlwind.”

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Clark’s victory lap punctuates a “breakout year,” he says. His two recent wins – and Sunday’s, in particular – have landed him into sports headlines and launched him up the PGA Tour standings. Now, he's chasing down the game’s biggest stars, like World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler as well as Rory McIlroy, both of whom he held off for the U.S. Open title.

The dramatic ending on Sunday saw Clark holding just a one-stroke lead on the final hole over Mcllroy, a four-time major winner himself. Despite the pressure, Clark maintained his focus and made par to close out the tournament. “The most important strokes in my life,” he says.

When the final putt sank, Wyndham broke down in tears as his sister Kaitlin Christine and younger brother Brendan Clark rushed to him for hugs — all three remembering their mother Lise, who died from cancer in 2013, and had once introduced her son Wyndham to the sport.

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“Initially, golf was not good for me,” Clark says about the years after his mother’s death. “It was where I was getting the most angry and frustrated. But as I kind of got over the grief and started to grow, golf started to become really fun for me, and these past six to eight months have been really fun. And now it's kind of my sanctuary and a place that I feel like I'm both comfortable and able to go and play and honor my mom.”

And honor her he did. Roughly 40 friends and family flew out to Los Angeles as he hovered near the top of the leaderboard over the weekend, some traveling as far from Florida and Illinois to support his tournament run. He shot -6, then -3, and -1, before shooting par on Sunday to win the tournament.

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That night, congratulatory texts came in from all over the world: “I got a text from Peyton Manning and from Charles Barkley, some of my friends like Christian McCaffrey and Nathan MacKinnon,” Wyndham says. “Michael Peña, the actor, he's a good friend of mine and he reached out. It was cool to see all the texts from people I've met over the years and even some people I didn't even know. They somehow got my number reached out to me.”

Clark says he’ll put his trophy “in my living room for a while or on the counter as a reminder” of the feat he pulled off this weekend. “I'm hoping this is one of many, of course,” Clark says. “But I'm definitely gonna enjoy it and soak it all in, because you only win your first major once.”

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