by PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Tyrrell Hatton couldn’t help himself. His 4-iron “hit and hope” at 18 through the pines and just outside 10 feet was so magnificent his facial muscles couldn’t hold back any longer.
“I actually smiled on the golf course,” Hatton said.
Why not after pulling off a miracle shot and cashing in with a birdie to shoot 29 to come home and tie the nine-hole scoring record on the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass?
The birdie in the latter culminated in a 7-under 65 for Hatton and a 72-hole total of 12-under 272. His birdie binge catapulted him from T-26 earlier in the day to the clubhouse leader (with Scottie Scheffler still needing to play the back nine that Hatton had just torched).
Hatton was left neutral with only birdie canceled by a bogey on nine, where he blocked his tee shot in the water.
“I was pretty angry at the time,” he said.
But he birdied 10 and 12 and then finished with five straight birdies, the longest birdie streak of his PGA Tour career.
After nailing his tee shot between 17 and 3 feet, Hatton blocked his tee shot between the pines, but had a window if he could aim for the water and cut it back onto the green.
“It was a risky shot, but it never crossed my mind to just try it,” he said.
Adding to the degree of difficulty of 208 yards? Lying in the pine straw.
“I couldn’t get the club right behind the ball and had to move it quite a bit back,” he said. “For it to turn out as well as it did, obviously I was delighted with (the result).”
As Hatton counted the shot and its completion over several media stops, Scheffler embarked on his own mini-birdie to build a commanding lead. But Hatton was still grinning from ear to ear.
“If you had said you would finish second in the tournament or tied for second and you don’t have to play the back nine, I think you would accept that,” he said.
The story originally appeared on GolfWeek
