Depending on who you are — and how twisted you’re thinking can get — golfers can convince themselves that a good warm-up will result in a bad round, and vice versa.
Without speculating on how Tyrrell Hatton’s mind works, it’s safe to say that he can overcome a poor warm-up. Case in point: Sunday at Bay Hill.
Hatton, the winner of the 2020 edition of the Arnold Palmer Invitational, came to the course on Sunday at 1-under par for the week and coming off of a 6-over par 78 in the third round, six shots back of the co-leaders, and given his warmup, he had no reason to believe Sunday would be much better.
“I was at nine more shots yesterday, so I’d say that’s more draining,” he said. “When you’re kind of coming down the stretch, you know you’re getting closer to the lead, and you see cameras start appearing so you know you’re doing something right.”
‘Angry Golfer’ Tyrrell Hatton had a good reason for not yelling ‘fore!’ after hooking it through a fairway at Bay Hill https://t.co/tRdGyIbmO7
— Golfweek (@golfweek) March 7, 2022
The 30-year-old Englishman labeled his range session as “shocking,” hitting his second driver out of the session out of the range area and across the ninth fairway, which runs parallel.
“With the second driver I hit, I think I missed the ninth fairway left from the driving range. I didn’t shout fore out of pure embarrassment. No one on a driving range should ever have to shout fore,” Hatton said. “That kind of shows you how bad it was.”
Alan Bastable / Golf.com
No one was injured, and Hatton soon found a swing thought that worked — “make sure the weight was in the middle of my foot on the backswing” — leading him to a final-round 3-under par 69, a runner-up finish and $908,000 in earnings.
“Luckily enough, I don’t know what I found, but just started hitting the ball good again,” Hatton said after posting only the second score in the 60s all day. “I played really good, and I’m very happy with that. Luckily, we didn’t have too many wides out there on the golf course. Maybe I was a bit more focused out there.”
