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Tyrrell Hatton still remembers the 7-iron he hit to the 18th green at Bay Hill Club & Lodge on Sunday over the Devil’s Bathtub at Arnie’s Place that essentially wrapped up his first PGA Tour victory last March.
“The amount of pressure that was on that shot and to kind of pull it off and to give myself what was probably the scariest 20-foot putt I’ve had in my life, it was, yeah, that was a great moment,” he recalled during his pre-tournament interview ahead of his title fence at the Arnold Palmer Invitational in Orlando.
Playing a fast and firm Bay Hill layout under extremely windy conditions, Hatton’s 72-hole total of 4-under 284 was the highest winning score in the 42-year history of the API.
“It was absolutely brutal over the weekend,” he said. “I remember I think I shot 3 over, over the weekend, which is almost unheard of to then be holding the trophy on Sunday evening.”
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But there he was on Sunday, sipping a Ketel One vodka, Palmer’s go-to drink other than his lemonade and iced tea concoction, and sporting the winner’s red cardigan sweater. He’s collected two more trophies on the European Tour and enters this week as the top-ranked player in the API field at No. 6 in the Official World Golf Ranking.
“It is surreal,” he conceded.
Heady stuff, indeed, and it lead one writer to ask Hatton if he was standing taller when he walked on the range these days.
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“Standing at 5 feet, 8 inches, I wish I could walk onto the range a little taller, but sadly that’s out of my control,” he cracked. “But, no, I mean, I feel confident when I go to a tournament if I know that my swing’s in a good place and I can kind of, if I manage my emotions well throughout the week then, sure, I’ll give myself a chance.”
Ah, those pesky emotions of his always have been Hatton’s greatest challenge. That made it surprising that the player known for his volcanic eruptions was the one that kept his cool and had the temperament to survive brutal conditions at Arnie’s Place.
Hatton being Hatton, he did have his moments when he was near self-combustion, especially after a double bogey at the 11th – he flipped off a pond that was the scene of his costly mistake – erased his lead, but he strung together seven straight gritty pars to finish the tournament and edge Marc Leishman by one stroke.
“He’s someone that you can tell wants it really badly out there,” said former World No. 1 Jordan Spieth.
Hatton’s father, Jeff, who has been his only swing instructor, once compared his son to how Spieth talks out loud when he hits a bad shot.
“Tyrrell gets a little more disgusted,” Jeff Hatton told The New York Times several years ago. “He shows his frustration, but then it’s gone. You’ll find he’s more of a gunfighter on the golf course. He’s not going to walk around the course like a robot with no expression.”
Hatton has shown that he even can have a laugh at his own expense at his volatile swing of emotions. His performance in the European Tour’s “Anger Management” training was worthy of a Golden Globes nod – the spoof video going viral – and he tipped off journalists that an encore performance was soon to drop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksDrIsiqZaA
“It’s gone down very well. I mean, it’s a pretty funny piece,” Hatton said. “I know that there’s a video coming out today that is almost a bit of a follow-on from that. So, yeah, you guys will have to keep your eyes peeled…I’ve seen it this morning and it’s pretty funny and I’m sure everyone’s going to enjoy watching it.”
It’s his ballstriking that has caught his competitor’s attention (he ranked fourth in 2019-20 in Strokes Gained: Approach The Green). Hatton’s victory at Bay Hill last year was the final event before the Tour’s three-month hiatus due to the global pandemic. Since then, he’s recorded five top-five finishes on the PGA Tour and won the BMW PGA Championship in September and Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship in January on the European Tour.
Spieth, for one, recognizes some similarities in Hatton’s game, if not his demeanor.
“It’s not going to be the longest, it’s not going to be like the prettiest, necessarily, way to do it, but the guy’s going to compete and he’s going to get the ball in the hole faster than the other people and that’s really the job,” Spieth said. “He’s one of those guys that possesses that kind of, that inner confidence and that competitiveness that, if things get a little off, he’s going to save par.”
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