It’s been well-established that golf is unlike most professional sports due to its athletes’ longevity, but a certain battle of the ages at this week’s Wyndham Championship is, well, one for the ages.

We’re talking about Akshay Bhatia and Stewart Cink being paired (along with Sam Burns) at Sedgefield Country Club. Why is that a big deal? Well, for one thing, one guy just turned 21 this year while the other has already started playing on the senior tour. Or, put another way, ol’ Stew wasn’t exactly snapping selfies when he won his first PGA Tour event.

But in addition to the three-decade gap between the two, there’s also this incredible stat that was unearthed by Sean Martin of PGATour.com:

Akshay Bhatia and Stewart Cink are paired at the Wyndham Championship. Bhatia is 21. Cink is 50.

Bhatia has been alive for 1,121 weeks.

Cink has been ranked 175th or better in the OWGR for 1,122.

— Sean Martin (@PGATOURSMartin) August 1, 2023

How ‘bout them apples? To be clear, this is way, way more impressive on the part of Cink because you’ve got to be really good for a really long time to pull off being in the top 175 of the Official World Golf Ranking for more than two decades. But it’s also yet another reminder of just how young Bhatia is.

Oh, and there’s one more interesting little wrinkle. Bhatia is coming off his maiden PGA Tour win and Cink was just named a vice captain for Team USA. So this could be a potential Ryder Cup audition as well. Good luck, young man. And tossing around “Mr. Cink” and “Sir” can’t hurt.

The post This mind-blowing stat shows just how crazy the Akshay Bhatia-Stewart Cink pairing is this week appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Christopher Powers
Akshay Bhatia’s decision to bypass college and turn professional at 17, at the time, was met with its fair share of doubts. On Wednesday, a mere two years later, the lanky lefty left absolutely no doubt by winning his first Korn Ferry Tour event in epic fashion.

Bhatia, who will turn 20 in 12 days, claimed the KFT season opener, The Bahamas Great Exuma Classic, by shooting a final-round seven-under 65. He birdied the 15th, 17th and 18th holes, an emphatic door-slamming that earned him a two-stroke victory over Paul Haley II. He was also inches from being a three-shot win, as Bhatia nearly holed out his approach shot for eagle on the par-5 18th:

“Just because it hasn’t been done, doesn’t make it impossible.” @akshaybhatia_1 pic.twitter.com/KJHXQC5uxd

— Korn Ferry Tour (@KornFerryTour) January 19, 2022

This was the 19-year-old’s first start as a KFT member, and just the sixth KFT start of his career. Bhatia spent the bulk of his last two seasons relying on sponsor’s exemptions into PGA Tour events. While he mostly struggled, he did manage a T-9 finish in the 2020 Safeway Open and a T-30 at the 2021 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. He also made the weekend at the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, ultimately finishing in a tie for 57th.

That was enough for Bhatia to earn KFT status as he finished between 151-200th in the 2020-’21 FedEx Cup standings. He’s now parlayed that into a season-opening win, which puts him that much closer to a PGA Tour card. Should he go on to win two more times, he will earn an immediate promotion to the PGA Tour for the remainder of this season in addition to earning a full exemption for next season.

Bhatia began Wednesday’s final round three shots back of solo leader Corey Shaun, who stood at 10 under after 54 holes. That gap was quickly closed when Bhatia went out in three-under 33, which he followed up with a back-nine 32 to finish at 14 under, two clear of Haley. Shaun finished at 10 under after posting an even-par 72.

Making the win all the more impressive was the fact that Bhatia did it with a girl on his bag whom he met on Instagram. Presleigh Schultz confirmed earlier in the week she knew nothing about golf. Bhatia direct messaged her prior to last April’s Valero Texas Open, and eight months later she was carrying his bag for a potentially life-changing win.

A pro’s pro. ?@akshaybhatia_1 wins @BahamasKFTour in his first #KornFerryTour start as a member! pic.twitter.com/RDQLNahCM4

— Korn Ferry Tour (@KornFerryTour) January 19, 2022

It’s still early, but there seem to be two things nobody can question with Bhatia—his talent and his decision-making skills.

The post 19-year-old Akshay Bhatia claims his first Korn Ferry Tour win at season opener in the Bahamas appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

How lovely it was, then, to ride the emotional roller coaster of “golf’s longest day.” The USGA successfully staged nine qualifiers across the United States on Monday, and those, in addition to May 24 qualifiers in Japan and Dallas completed this year’s process of narrowing down the 8,680 players who signed up for Local Qualifying to the 60 men who earned their tickets to Torrey Pines.

That is, they almost completed it. Storms in Columbus, Ohio, delayed play at that über-stacked site—with the Memorial finishing Sunday in the area, it’s chalk-filled with PGA Tour pros—for more than three hours, which will force the contenders to return Tuesday morning to finish things off. With that in mind, here are the seven most intriguing storylines to emerge from final qualifying, at least so far.

Cameron Young is giving us some serious Will Zalatoris vibes
Young, a 24-year-old graduate of Wake Forest, should not move a muscle. Because, as we learned in “The Hangover,” you never walk away from the table when you’re on a heater.

The torrid stretch began out of nowhere three weeks ago, when he won the Korn Ferry Tour’s AdventHealth Championship—which came right after he missed five cuts in his previous six starts. Young followed it with a five-shot victory at the Evans Scholars Invitational to put himself one win short of earning the ultra-rare Battlefield Promotion to the PGA Tour, and giving himself a chance to become the first player to win three Korn Ferry events in back-to-back-to-back weeks. It wasn’t to be at last week’s Rex Hospital Open; he finished T-78 before boarding a flight back home to New York. Young is something of a Met section hero, having won everything there is to win in the area as an amateur. He added another chapter to his local-legend status by shooting 67 at Old Oaks Country Club and 66 at Century Country Club to breeze to medalist honours. This is the second time he’s played his way into the U.S. Open, having done so in 2019. (He shot 75-76 at Pebble Beach to miss the cut).

Ed Zurga

Young’s run is bringing to mind another Korn Ferry star out of Wake Forest who caught a heater and rode it to stardom: Will Zalatoris, who got a spot into last year’s Open with his play on the KFT, then finished T-6—and, well, you know the rest.

Branden Grace rides the momentum from Muirfield
He’s the only man in golf history to shoot 62 in a major championship. He’s won 14 events around the world and two on the PGA Tour, including the Puerto Rico Open earlier this year. He’s appeared in the top 10 of the World Ranking and played on three International Presidents Cup teams. He has two top-five finishes in U.S. Opens. He’s squarely in his prime at 33 years old. He finished fourth in the Memorial the day before. And yet there Branden Grace was on Monday morning, playing in a 36-hole qualifier, a reminder that professional golf is a meritocracy.

In a stroke of good fortune, the qualifier took place at The Bear’s Club, where heaps of touring pros are members—including Patrick Rodgers, who took medalist honours, and Grace, who shot 70-72 to squeak in on the number. He’ll now tee it up in his seventh straight U.S. Open, although this one came a bit more difficult than the others.

Akshay Bhatia, still just 19, continues to show signs

In an age when nearly every great American junior spends at least some time in college, Bhatia raised quite a few eyebrows when the phenom eschewed that option in favour of turning professional as a 17-year-old. After a rough first year-plus as a pro, he’s slowly beginning to find his footing. Last fall, he finished T-9 at the Safeway Open. This February, he became the first player since 2008 to hit all 18 greens at Pebble Beach in the first round of the AT&T, eventually finishing T-30.

The rail-thin 19-year-old lefty will now get his first crack at a major after getting through a 3-for-1 playoff at Long Cove Club in Hilton Head, S.C. His first-round 65 was the low round of the day, then he held on for dear life in shooting two-over 73 in the second round, then got up-and-down on the first playoff hole to stay alive, then parred the second to crush the hopes of Ben Martin and Zack Sucher.

Brian Stuard has to run for mayor of Springfield, Ohio

Harry How

Getting through one Final Qualifying to advance to the U.S. Open is hard. It’s a long day, it’s hot, and there’s significant pressure.

Brian Stuard missed the memo. The 38-year-old, whose one win on the PGA Tour was a rain-shortened Zurich Classic in 2016, qualified from the Springfield site for the fourth straight time (minus last year, when there was no qualifier) and sixth overall. No, seriously. The world No. 217 absolutely loves the place, and it’s not like he came in on a great run of form—he has just one top-10 in 25 starts on the PGA Tour this season, and it came in the very first event of the year in September. Doesn’t matter, though. There’s just something about Stuard in Springfield. Six times through Final Qualifying. Amazing!

Sahith Theegala’s first major as a pro will be at home in SoCal
Theegala’s senior season at Pepperdine in 2020 was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic with he, and his team, ranked No. 1 in the nation. He became the fifth player to sweep the Haskins, Ben Hogan and Nicklaus awards—Florida State’s John Pak just became the sixth a few days ago—but was forced to end his college career in unceremonious fashion.

The big Californian has been playing solidly on the Korn Ferry Tour in 2021, having made the cut in all six of his starts, and finished a very respectable T-32 last week at the Memorial. He then made the hour trip down I-70 to Springfield Country Club and won a 3-for-1 playoff to get into the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, which is 80 miles from his hometown of Orange, Calif. He’ll be comfortable in that SoCal June gloom, as well as the kikuyu grass that covers Torrey, and surely his family will be able to attend. He’s actually played in one U.S. Open before, missing the cut in 2017 at Erin Hills, but this will be his first as a pro, and he couldn’t ask for a much better situation.

Joe Highsmith—from the natty to the Open

Jamie Schwaberow

Highsmith is having quite the golf month. The Pepperdine junior won his final match 4 and 3 at the NCAA Championship to help his Pepperdine Waves beat Oklahoma and win the national title. (If you watched the action on Golf Channel, which was highly compelling, he was the one in the bucket hat). Five days later, and back in his home state of Washington, he took medalist honors at the Meadow Springs Country Club site in Richland to claim a tee time at Torrey. How about that for a golf month?

Carson Schaake boatraces the field … wait, who?
Schaake played his college ball at non-powerhouse Iowa, turned pro in 2017 and hasn’t done all that much since. He Monday qualified into a Korn Ferry event last summer only to shoot 77-75 and miss the cut by a million. The 26-year-old has been on the mini-tour grind and had to play a local qualifier to get into the Sprinfield, Ohio, site, where he proceeded to shoot 68-63 to beat the rest of the field by a good three shots.

This is precisely why we love these qualifiers so much—they provide a struggling pro with a lifeline, an opportunity to earn his way into a field with Rory and Dustin and Jordan. We can only imagine the utter joy Schaake and his family are feeling this evening.

The post The 7 most intriguing stories from U.S. Open Final Qualifying appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Christopher Powers
The 2021 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am (or lack thereof) doesn’t have the strongest field in tournament history, nor does it have the overall energy that both the fans and celebrities bring to the event each year. But Pebble is still Pebble. For those of us staring out the window and seeing nothing but snow, that’s good enough.

Even with a dearth of star power, the handful of top players who did make the trip to the Monterey Peninsula showed up on Thursday. If they show up the next three days, too, this AT&T could end up being a damn good one after all.

Here are four takeaways from Day 1 at Pebble.

Patrick Cantlay is a robot (in a good way)
When pre-tournament favourite Dustin Johnson withdrew on Monday, Patrick Cantlay became the lone favourite at single-digit odds. He showed why he was the favourite on Thursday, shooting a first-round 62 at Pebble, matching the course record. As it often looks, Cantlay played in an almost robotic fashion, the former No. 1 amateur in the world looking to get back inside the Official World Golf Ranking top 10 with another high finish this week. His last three rounds on the PGA Tour read a little something like this: 65-61-62. If not for a sloppy 71 on Friday at The American Express, he likely would have won his second tournament in four starts (he wound up losing by one to Si Woo Kim). Remember his poor stretch between late July and late September, when he … GASP … made five of six cuts, but failed to post a single top-10? That’s the standard of consistency he had set for all of 2019 and the first half of 2020, where Cantlay not top-10ing every week was cause for concern. He seems to be back to that level already, which will have the whole world on the Cantlay bandwagon as we inch closer to the Masters (only 60 days away, if you can believe it).

Ezra Shaw

We will not declare Jordan Spieth back. We will not declare Jordan Spieth back. We will n-….
After the letdown of all letdown final rounds from Spieth last Sunday at the Waste Management Phoenix Open, it was extremely fair to wonder if Saturday was just a flash of brilliance for the three-time major champion. Hey, he’s shown those flashes since 2017 before, and it’s amounted to zero wins. Maybe he wasn’t back. Maybe he just had a Steph Curry-like day from long range with the putter. Maybe he got some really lucky breaks and was able to term them all into birdies. Maybe we all jumped the gun.

Thursday’s first-round 65 at Pebble, which has Spieth just three off the lead, has us thinking that maybe we didn’t. Maybe he did really find something last Saturday at TPC Scottsdale, and even though he didn’t finish the job off, he gained a ton of confidence from the weekend as a whole. That sure seemed to be the case in his opening round, which included a hole-out for eagle on the par-4 10th, plus six birdies and just one bogey. The approach game was strong again (eighth in the field in strokes-gained/APP), the driving was serviceable, and his putting and around-the-green play was as good as ever. No, we’re not declaring him fully back, but this was another huge step in the proverbial “process.”

Ezra Shaw

Is Akshay SZN upon us?
Our Daniel Rapaport, who is on site this week, has the full Akshay Bhatia story from Thursday, but it’d be disrespectful to not tip our cap to this young king here. The 19-year-old (yes, 19) threw up an eight-under 64 at Pebble, giving him a share of T-2 with Henrik Norlander. He gained more than 2.5 strokes on approach, which ranks him third in the field, and gained a silly 3.201 strokes putting. “It’s the first time I’ve ever putted this well,” said Bhatia, who switched to a short putter after using the arm-lock technique for “awhile.” Most impressively, hit all 18 greens, something that had only been done three times in the last 25 years at Pebble Beach, the last coming in 2008, when Ryan Palmer accomplished the feat. The kid is an S-T-U-D stud, and is quickly becoming a welcome addition to this crop of young stars on tour.

Harry How

Daniel Berger and Will Gordon should be feeling very good about their chances
At the end of Round 1, Gordon is four back and Berger five back, but they probably both feel like they are right near the top. Why? Well, these two went low at Spyglass Hill, the far more difficult of the two courses players will face this week. Six under and five under there is getting a huge head start, and if they do something similar on Friday at Pebble, one of them could very well end up with the 36-hole lead. One thing working against them, though, is that there are 10-to-20 mph winds in the forecast, so Pebble Beach won’t play nearly as easy as it did Friday. But posting a low one on Spyglass is still a win. As it stands, these two are the only players in the top 21 who played Spyglass on Thursday.

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By Christopher Powers
After three long days and a one-hour “fog” delay, the PGA Tour returned in Napa Valley at Silverado Resort, site of the first event of the 2020-’21 “Super Season,” the Safeway Open. This year’s field is even leaner than usual, as many of the world’s best are gearing up for next week’s U.S. Open on the other side of the country.

But a certain 18-year-old is threatening to make this week’s Safeway a must-see event on the weekend. We are of course talking about lanky lefty Akshay Bhatia, who shot the lowest round of his still nascent pro career on Thursday in Cali. Those who have followed his junior career know he is going to be special, but immediate success was always going to be a very tall order.

That could change with another strong round on Friday, which would put Bhatia in the hunt in just his eighth career PGA Tour event. Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, here are our five takeaways from Day 1 of the Safeway Open.

The Akshay Bhatia era has begun
Collin Morikawa? Old news. Viktor Hovland? Flash in the pan. Matthew Wolff? Never heard of him. The PGA Tour now belongs to Akshay Bhatia.

OK, OK, that screech you hear is me slamming on the brakes, but an 18-year-old shooting a six-under 66 on the big tour will always be impressive. What’s more impressive, though, is that it came in his 16th career round on tour. It already feels like this kid has been around a while and he literally hasn’t even gotten started yet. For those who need a refresher, Bhatia was the former top-ranked junior player in the world and finished runner-up at the 2018 U.S. Junior Amateur at Baltusrol. He then skipped college entirely and turned pro at 17, his first pro start coming at the 2019 Sanderson Farms Championship. A year earlier, he played in his first PGA Tour event on a sponsor’s exemption at the Valspar.

This week’s Safeway marks Bhatia’s eighth tour start, and he has not made the cut in any of his previous seven. Barring a second-round 78, he should safely make the weekend in Napa, which would be the biggest accomplishment to date in his young pro career. Something tells us he has much bigger aspirations than making cuts, though.

Sean M. Haffey
Russell Knox putts on the 13th hole during round one of the Safeway Open.

We see you, Russell Knox
Well, considering he’s at the top of the leader board, everyone sees him, but it’s somewhat shocking to read his name there. When you think of Knox, two things immediately jump to mind: 1. The hat throw celebration when he holed the winning putt at the 2016 Travelers Championship and 2. His implosion at the 17th at the 2016 Players (which included a shank). In other words, this guy has had some very high highs and some very low lows. At one point in 2018, the Scotsman climbed all the way to 18th in the Official World Golf Ranking. He then fell as low as 116th before getting all the way back to 49th. At 35 years old, he’s seen all the ups and downs.

Coming into this week, Knox had fallen to his lowest ranking ever, 208th. On Thursday, he shot a bogey-free nine-under 63, with just one of his birdie putts coming from longer than 14 feet. He’s always been a machine with his irons, but poor play off the tee and some even worse putting have plagued him even during his good years. Last season was arguably his worst on the PGA Tour, ands it featured a stretch in which he missed 10 consecutive cuts. But as he’s shown throughout his career and particularly on Thursday, he has the ability to keep grinding away and eventually snap out of his funk. Don’t be surprised if he keeps up this stellar approach play through the weekend and remains in contention until the very end.

Jed Jacobsohn
Jordan Spieth walks on the third hole during round one of the Safeway Open.

Jordan Spieth did Jordan Spieth things (not a compliment)
A few years ago, that sentence would lead you to believe Spieth was hitting his irons better than anyone in the field and holing putts from everywhere. Today, in September of 2020, that sentence means Spieth was erratic with his driver (he lost 0.905 strokes off the tee), not great with his irons (he lost 1.063 strokes on approach) and didn’t make anything with his putter (he lost 1.880 strokes putting). All that added up to a one-over 73 on a course where 32 players are currently four under our better. To his credit, he made two late birdies, but those feel a lot less like momentum heading into Friday and a lot more like Spieth patching up a torn apart teddy bear with a couple of pieces of scotch tape. It’s bad right now, real bad. We’re writing about Jordan Spieth’s (three-time major champion Jordan Spieth) middling round in the Safeway Open a week before Winged Foot right now. THAT kind of bad. It goes without saying since it’s been said roughly a billion times now, but we’re all pulling for him to get it together, but it’s not happening this week and it’s definitely not happening next week either.

It’s so good to have live golf back in our lives

I’m sorry, I had to. Let’s all agree that that’s the final “how about that offseason!” dad joke, OK?

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By Brian Wacker
MIAMI — It was late January and Akshay Bhatia, the former top-ranked junior who skipped college to turn pro last fall at age 17, was cruising the friendly skies in Phil Mickelson’s $40 million Gulfstream V, the two lefties on their way to the European Tour’s Saudi International. Bhatia, whose agent is from the same firm that represents Mickelson (explaining the lift), missed the cut with a pair of two-over 72s, while Mickelson tied for third. But it was the stories from the sojourn and nightly dinners that the gangly teen with the trendy big-rimmed glasses remembers most.

Among the printable ones was the time Mickelson was playing in a college tournament for Arizona State, trailing a teammate by one coming to the last hole, and hit a banana cut driver out of a fairway bunker, over water, to set up eagle and a one-shot win. There was also the one when Lefty hit through the trees and skipped a shot across the water on his way to winning the Tucson Open as an amateur in 1991.

“Twenty hours in a plane with Phil Mickelson was frickin’ sick,” Bhatia says. “The shots he’s able to pull off or even think about are extraordinary.”

So, too, are Bhatia’s abilities. At 6-feet tall and a buck-thirty, he’s got only a few pounds on Gisele Bundchen and is more Gumby than Brooks Koepka. And yet his long limbs and rubber-band elasticity allows him to generate a swing speed teetering on 125 mph (the high 120s is among the fastest on the PGA Tour). His ball-striking is also attention-getting. “I’ve never seen someone hit the ball as well as he does, and I’ve seen a lot,” says swing coach George Gankas, who has worked with Bhatia since he was 13 and counts another hyper-talented and unique young star, Matthew Wolff, among his pupils. “He’s got a gift. His work ethic is also off the charts, and he loves the game.”

Both traits are handy these days.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down most of the world, including professional golf, Bhatia, who turned 18 at the end of January, was a phenom trying to scrap his way onto the PGA Tour. Using the first of seven sponsor’s exemptions in his pro debut at the Sanderson Farms Championship last September, he missed the cut. He did the same in each of his next four PGA Tour starts, too, with a T-42 in a Korn Ferry Tour event sandwiched in between, before jetting halfway across the world with Lefty.

In March, Bhatia finished in the top 40 of qualifying for Canada’s Mackenzie Tour to earn conditional status, but the start of that circuit’s season was postponed and a restart date has yet to be announced. He also was scheduled to play in the Hero Indian Open in March on a sponsor’s invite before the European Tour nixed that tournament.

All of which explains why Bhatia, along with his girlfriend and his 22-year-old sister, made the 820-mile drive last late last week from his parents’ home in Wake Forest, N.C.—with a stop in Sea Island, Ga., for a round of golf along the way—to Melreese Country Club in Miami for a 36-hole tournament Monday and Tuesday on the Minor League Golf Tour. The method of transport wasn’t as glamorous as it was heading to the Middle East (Bhatia’s white Acura MDX SUV), the accommodations not as plush (Holiday Inn) and the purse nowhere near as rich ($11,200) but none of that seemed to matter.

“I love traveling, especially to Florida,” said Bhatia, who got to Miami on Saturday and spent most nights holed up at the hotel, Netflixing “Outer Banks” as most of the magic city, including its beaches, are still shut down because of coronavirus. “Anytime I’m able to come down here, it’s a blessing.”

Bhatia competed this week in his first tournament since trying to Monday qualify for the Honda Classic in March, finishing fourth in a 36-hole event on the Minor League Golf Tour in Miami.

Unfortunately, the trip didn’t have a happy ending. On Monday, in his first competitive round since failing to Monday qualify for the Honda Classic in March, Bhatia shot a bogey-free five-under 66 (see photo above) that included three birdies over his final nine holes to jump into the lead. But he couldn’t keep it up in Tuesday’s second round, shooting a three-over 74 to finish four shots back of former PGA Tour pro Brad Adamonis in fourth place, earning $915.

The field at Melreese was small (46 players) and nowhere near the quality of a PGA Tour event, but it did include some recognizable names, among them 2014 U.S. Open runner-up and hometown favorite Erik Compton, tour veteran Gonzalo Fernandez-Castano, as well as a handful of Korn Ferry Tour players.

The venue was no pushover, either. A classic South Florida course, five lakes snake through the property and water comes into play on half the holes of the Dick Wilson design, which is also dotted with live oaks and tall palm trees. The site of Monday qualifying for the Puerto Rico Open earlier this year and previously home to PGA Tour Latinoamerica’s season-ending championship, its fairways are tight, greens large and undulating and the property breezy and noisy as it sits next to a major highway and is adjacent one of the world’s busiest airports. But it’s also a ball-striker’s paradise—Compton and Cristie Kerr honed their skills as kids at the ‘Reese and still play it regularly—and Bhatia is unmistakably a high-level ball-striker.

That much was evident throughout his junior career, during which he won the 2017 Junior PGA Championship at 22 under before successfully defending his title a year later, won the 2018 Dustin Johnson World Junior and the Jones Cup the following year. He also took home two silver medals at the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics, in the boys individual and in the mixed team event partnering with Lucy Li, and finished runner-up at that year’s U.S. Junior Amateur.

Home-schooled and without much interest (or the academics) for college, Bhatia eschewed the traditional route and turned pro in 2019 just after becoming the first high schooler to make the U.S. Walker Cup team (see photos below). Then there was the time he played Mickelson to a draw in a recent round at Phil’s home club in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. He hasn’t looked back, despite his early struggles.

“I never doubted it,” Bhatia says of the decision. “I know my game is certainly good enough to play with a lot of guys [on Tour]. It’s just being comfortable in certain situations and allowing myself to not play well and not care. I cared so much about playing well that it was hard for me sometimes. But seeing Wolff and Collin Morikawa [do well]—those guys were top five players in the world [as amateurs], so was I.

“A lot of people are gonna hate on my decision. But in the long run, this is my college.”

It helps, too, when your professors are Mickelson and Wolff, along with Harris English and Patton Kizzire, among many other tour players who have been outgoing toward Bhatia.

Bhatia capped his amateur career by becoming the first high schooler to make the U.S. Walker Cup team, helping the Americans win last September at Royal Liverpool.

The time off because of the pandemic has been helpful, in as much as it gave Bhatia time to iron out some kinks in his game. He is, after all, still just 18.

With golf courses in North Carolina staying open throughout, the teen spent the last two months dialing in his backswing and downswing with his local coach, Chase Duncan. Habitually, his club face would come open during the latter, and he’d have to rely on his hands and timing. Now, says Gankas, who still works with him from afar, Bhatia’s downward move features a more forward lean from the handle and a lead arm that doesn’t get trapped behind him as much. That’s led to increased distance and instead of bleeder cuts that flared out to the left Bhatia is now blasting his 7-iron 195 yards and with more consistency, too.

“His speed didn’t change, the dynamic loft did,” Gankas said. “[The changes] were something that had to happen in an offseason. They couldn’t happen while he was trying to play tournaments.”

Bhatia also recently began working with a mental coach, who reminded him that it was OK to fail early. “It’s going to be a process,” Bhatia says. “That’s how golf is.”

With two PGA Tour exemptions still remaining and professional golf slowly returning, Bhatia is hopeful he’ll be able to use one of them in his home state at the Wyndham Championship in August. There are other possibilities, too, in the truncated PGA Tour schedule, as well as another Korn Ferry Tour event or two and, of course, the Mackenzie Tour should it resume its season.

That said, Bhatia’s future is a far more uncertain than it was only a few months ago. Whereas before he would have been satsified trying to Monday qualify into PGA Tour events, the number of spots available from these is dropping from four to two for the rest of the season. And with this fall’s Korn Ferry Tour Qualifying School already canceled, improving his status in the pro ranks for 2021 has become exponentially more difficult.

Even so, wherever the road leads, Bhatia is happy to be on it. And happy to be playing in a tournament again.

“I’m a professional golfer playing in a professional event this week,” he said with a smile. “I haven’t thought about that in a long time.”

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Bhatia’s pair of 71s at the RSM Classic left him five shots off the cut line, but both teacher and student were confident the seventeen-year-old phenom was closer than that to booking a weekend tee time.

“I don’t think there’s anything to change,” Gankas told GolfDigest.com. “I just think he’s 17 years old. I think it’s just a matter of time before things start flowing. He just needs more flow.”

Gankas, caddying for Bhatia for the first time, says he was happy to serve as a “security blanket” if anything popped up with his swing during play. But there certainly wasn’t much to tweak there. Bhatia led the field in driving distance for 36 holes and ranked eighth in strokes gained/approach-the-green during a second-round at Sea Island’s Seaside Course, where he missed only two greens.

“I know I’m right there and my game’s there for sure, it’s just the mental part of it. I’ve just got to learn. That’s the biggest thing,” Bhatia said. “There’s just different shots that you hit that normally you’d go for, but because of the atmosphere, you’ve got to err on the safe side. I’m learning a lot and it’s definitely fun. I was happy to have George on the bag this week.”

Bhatia gave himself plenty of chances, but ranked second-to-last in strokes gained/putting through 36 holes. That included a four-putt from 12 feet on No. 8 after he had pulled within one stroke of the cut line.

“The kid is just an unbelievable ball-striker, he hits it hard, he hits it straight, he hits lots of greens, he hits it close. I don’t know how many times we were inside 15 feet, but it felt like at least 12 times we were inside 15 feet and we didn’t make one of them except for the three birdies that were all like two feet. So it was one of those things.”

Bhatia, who posed for photos with several young—well, similarly aged—fans after his round, was making his fourth PGA Tour start on a sponsor’s exemption since turning pro, but is still in search of a first made cut. He’s also got an uncertain schedule after failing to make it past the second stage of Korn Ferry Tour Q-school.

“I’m not sure, I’ll sit down with the team and we’ll see,” Bhatia said of his upcoming schedule. “But I have three (PGA Tour) starts left and I’ll definitely do some Mondays and maybe go to Europe and play some golf over there.”

While Gankas was glad to fill-in on the bag, the in-demand instructor who also coaches Matthew Wolff says it won’t be a common sight.

“But I did enjoy it and he’s a great kid,” Gankas said. “And I think he’s going to be one of the best players in the world.”

The post George Gankas gets a different viewpoint of prized pupil Akshay Bhatia, likes what he sees despite missed cut appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Joel Beall
Akshay Bhatia, the 17-year-old prodigy from Wake Forest, N.C., is making his professional debut at this week’s Sanderson Farms Championship. Bhatia’s amateur degree is not in doubt, becoming the first golfer still in high school to compete for the United States in Walker Cup history just two weeks ago. However, while Bhatia submitted promising starts at the Valspar Championship and the Korn Ferry Tour’s Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail Championship last season, the track record of teenagers turning pro is decidedly mixed.

For the sake of our exercise, we focused on those who skipped college, leaving out the phenoms like Eddie Pearce, Ben Crenshaw, Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods and Jordan Spieth.

From the highs of Seve and Rory to a handful of flameouts, here is how 10 notable prodigies fared when making the leap.

Bobby Cole
The South African won the 1966 British Amateur at 18, the youngest winner in the event’s history for nearly 33 years, and became the youngest player to make the cut at the Masters the following year (another record that held for 33 years). When he won the tour’s Q-School in 1967 at 19, Cole was heralded as the heir to Gary Player. But while Cole made 390 starts in his tour career and finished a stroke out of a playoff at the 1975 Open, he won just once in the United States.

Seve Ballesteros
The Spaniard turned pro at 16 in 1974; within two years, he won his first European Tour event by eight shots and led the tour’s Order of Merit. Ballesteros also finished runner-up at the Open that summer, ultimately winning his first of five majors at the 1979 Open at age 22. The following year, Seve became the youngest winner of the Masters (a mark surpassed by Tiger Woods in 1997), claiming the green jacket just four days after his 23rd birthday. He made eight Ryder Cup appearances and lead Team Europe to a win as captain in 1997. His 50 wins are the most in Euro Tour history, and he is regarded as the best Continental European golfer of all-time.

Justin Rose
The Englishman finished T-4 at the 1998 Open Championship as a 17-year-old but famously struggled when turning pro the week after, missing the cut in his first 21 starts. Though he earned his Euro card in 1999 through the tour’s Q School, he would have to revisit it the following year. Despite the rocky start, Rose has since transformed into one of his eras best players with 24 worldwide wins, including the 2013 U.S. Open. He also won the gold medal in golf’s return to the Olympics in 2016 and reached No. 1 in the world for the first time in his career last season.

MCT

Ty Tryon
He made the cut at the 2001 Honda Classic at 16; later that season, Tryon became the youngest player (17) to earn a tour card through Q School. That, coupled with an enormous sponsorship deal with Callaway, amplified the Tryon hype to deafening levels. A battle with mononucleosis derailed his rookie season, and he made just four cuts in 21 starts playing on a medical exemption the following season. He qualified for the 2010 and 2011 U.S. Opens, but hasn’t made a regular PGA Tour start since 2003.

Ryo Ishikawa
Ishikawa won a Japan Golf Tour event at 15, and by 17—following four more Japan victories—was the youngest golfer ever to reach the top 50 of the Official World Golf Rankings. Although he played in three majors in 2009, he was introduced to the world in 2010 when he was T-2 after 36 holes at the U.S. Open. Ishikawa would finish T-33 that weekend at Pebble Beach, and though he would make 145 starts on tour, he never found sustained success in America. However, he has enjoyed a career rejuvenation in Japan the past two months, with two wins and two additional top-six finishes, vaulting him to No. 109 in the OWGR.

Sean O’Hair
O’Hair turned professional after his junior year of high school in 1999. He was unsuccessful in his first five tries at Q School, and labored on multiple minor-league circuits. He was also tormented by a strained relationship with his father, inflicted with reports of physical and emotional abuse. Estranged from his family, O’Hair broke through at Q School in 2004, and won the 2005 John Deere Classic in route to earning PGA Tour Rookie of the Year. O’Hair has four wins on tour and has $24 million in career earnings.

Kevin Na
Like O’Hair, Na bypassed his senior year of high school for professional aspirations. Rather than working his way through the U.S. developmental tours, Na took an international journey, playing on the Asian and European Tours to secure PGA Tour status. Na has enjoyed a solid career with $30 million in earnings in almost 400 starts, boasting three wins—two coming in the past 14 months.

Tony Finau
Following a win at the 2006 Utah State Amateur Championship in 2006, Finau eschewed college basketball offers to turn pro at 17. For nearly a decade Finau bounced around systems like the Mackenzie Tour, Gateway Tour, NGA Hooters Tour, and National Pro Tour before earning his tour card through the then-Web.com Tour in 2014. Finau has made more than $16 million since joining the tour, highlighted by six top 10s at majors and a Ryder Cup appearance in 2018.

Rory McIlroy
The Ulsterman made his European Tour debut at 16 years old, and made the cut as an amateur at the 2007 Dubai Desert Classic and Open Championship. He turned pro that fall, and accumulated enough money to earn a card for the following season, becoming the youngest player to do so in Euro Tour history. He won the 2009 Dubai Desert Classic at 19 and hasn’t slowed down since with 26 worldwide wins, highlighted by four majors and winning both the PGA Tour and European Tour Player of the Year awards three times.

Matteo Manassero
Those Cole records listed above? Manassero was the man who broke them, winning the 2009 British Am at 16, finishing T-13 at that year’s Open and making the weekend at the 2010 Masters a month shy of his 17th birthday. Manassero would turn pro a month after Augusta, winning the Euro Tour’s Castelló Masters Costa Azahar that fall to capture Rookie of the Year honours. He has won three more Euro events since his inaugural victory, reaching as high as No. 25 in the Official World Golf Ranking. But he has missed the cut in nine of 15 majors starts as a pro, and though he’s only 26 years old, his career is in desperate need of resuscitation, making just two cuts in 2019 and falling to No. 1123 in the OWGR.

The post As Akshay Bhatia makes his PGA Tour debut, how 10 other high school prodigies fared when turning pro appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Joel Beall
Give Akshay Bhatia this: he is not one for patience.

Bhatia, 17, long announced his intentions to forgo college and turn professional after high school. Two months ago, Bhatia circled the Safeway Open as his platform for his professional debut.

However, it turns out the Safeway will now be pro tournament No. 2 for Bhatia, as he announced on Monday he will be playing in this week’s Sanderson Farms Championship. He is in the field via a sponsor’s exemption.

“That feeling when the time has officially come,” Bhatia wrote on Instagram. “A special thanks to everyone on my team that has helped me get here this week, especially my family for supporting me all the way. Let’s do this!”

 

View this post on Instagram

 

That feeling when the time has officially come. So excited to announce that I will be making my professional debut this week @sanderson_champ . A special thanks to everyone on my team that has helped me get here this week, especially my family for supporting me all the way. Let’s do this!

A post shared by Akshay Bhatia (@akshaybhatia_1) on Sep 16, 2019 at 5:00am PDT

The Wake Forest, N.C., resident announced in May that he had signed with Lagardere Sports for management and marketing representation, and targeted the fall in multiple interviews as a launch for his pro career.

Bhatia, fifth in the World Amateur rankings, has won five junior and amateur events in the past year, highlighted by a victory at the Jones Cup Invitational. He made his first start in a PGA Tour event earlier this season at the Valspar Championship and was able to Monday qualify, and make the cut, at the Korn Ferry Tour’s Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail Championship.

Two weeks ago, Bhatia was the first golfer still in high school to compete for the United States in Walker Cup history, scoring two points for the Americans in their victory over Great Britain & Ireland at Royal Liverpool.

The post 17-year-old Akshay Bhatia making professional debut at Sanderson Farms Championship this week appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.