Tyrrell Hatton slept better last night after his long journey from England to Las Vegas for this week’s CJ Cup at Shadow Creek. But he doesn’t want to wake from this dream run of golf that began last week when he won the European Tour’s flagship event, the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth, not far from where he grew up.
It was a storybook victory and despite the lengthy trip across the pond with a refueling at the TK, he’s picked up right where he left off. Hatton followed up his opening-round 65 with a 4-under 68 on Friday to improve to 11-under 133. He sits in solo second, trailing Xander Schauffele by three strokes.
“It’s quite a long travel time to get here this week,” he said. “And with that being said, although you’ve played well one week, golf’s a funny game. You can hop on a plane and all of a sudden you kind of lose your golf swing somewhere over the Atlantic, but I think it stayed with me at the moment and like I said, I hope that continues.”
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Hatton carded three birdies on the front nine, including stuffing his tee shot to 17 inches at the par-3 eighth hole. The back nine, however, was a bit more of a rollercoaster. Hatton dropped his first shot of the day at the 11th, but bounced back with birdies at the 12th and 14th holes. Then he started going in reverse before righting the ship on his way to the clubhouse.
“It was an inconsistent day,” said Hatton, who made seven birdies and three bogeys. “Obviously I was disappointed with bogeys on 15 and 16. I hit a couple of poor shots there, especially the one that annoyed me the most was laying up with a 6-iron on 16 and we didn’t even look like hitting the fairway. So, that’s just a stupid mistake, but obviously really happy with how we bounced back from that. Finishing birdie-birdie was nice and hopefully I can take a bit of momentum going into the weekend.”
The Englishman, who turned 29 on Wednesday, won the Arnold Palmer Invitational in March and climbed to No. 10 in the Official World Golf Ranking this week, setting a new personal best. He did so after winning his fifth European Tour title, the BMW, at the tournament he considers his favorite week of the year and in which a trip to Wentworth at age 5 inspired him to play professional golf. Don’t wake the jet-lagged Hatton from this dream run of good form.
When a dream becomes reality 🏆#BMWPGA #RolexSeries pic.twitter.com/AkSH23052V
— Tyrrell Hatton (@TyrrellHatton) October 12, 2020
“I was probably still a little bit on edge today as well,” he said. “Just feeling a little bit tired still, although I slept a lot better last night. I’m in a great position going into the weekend, all things considered with the travel that we’ve done to get here, and hopefully again I can have another good night’s rest tonight and feel a bit fresher tomorrow.”
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