Gurugram: Golf provides the calm image as a contest between the player and the course. That is until a back-nine scramble on a Sunday afternoon turns it into a virtual slugfest. The late charge is part of the Tiger Woods legend when the mental resolve of his rivals melted. Golf at its most spectator-friendly and spectacular.
Contemporaries of Woods, having been at the receiving end of the 15-time Major champion, have spoken with amusement when younger players saw him a friend. At 24, Akshay Bhatia is part of a generation that has only heard of Woods’s tall deeds. But playing for his Jupiter Links Golf Club in the TGL (Tomorrow’s Golf League) has given him the opportunity to interact with Woods. (TGL is simulated indoor golf—tee shots are played into a large simulator and a green, which matches the ball placement in the simulator for putts also used.) Jupiter are facing Los Angeles in the three-match finals this week.
Bhatia, one of the hottest young players currently on the PGA Tour, is fresh from winning the Arnold Palmer Invitational this month. He will tee off in the Hero Indian Open DP World Tour event at the DLF Golf and Country Club this week. It will be the first event in the country of his parents’ birth. His parents moved to the USA from Delhi. The world No.22 is a global ambassador for the sponsors of the $2.55 million event.
It has been six years in the making as Bhatia, who skipped college to turn pro at 17, saw his plan to play an event in India in 2020 dashed due to the Covid pandemic.
Steely approach
Bhatia too has built a reputation for his resilience at the business end of golf tournaments, all three PGA Tour wins having come via playoffs. His early season form shone in a tied-third at the Phoenix Open, tied-sixth the next week in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and T16 in the Genesis Invitational before the Arnold Palmer Invitational, one of the tour’s signature events, where he sealed it with a great back-nine charge to edge out Daniel Berger.
Addressing the media on Tuesday, Bhatia was happy to finally be playing in India. He revealed it took over 18 hours to fly from Orlando to Delhi via Amsterdam, and how special it is to connect with members of his extended family. He also fielded questions on what it took to seal the deal on Sundays and interactions with Woods.
“Honestly, we’ve built more of a friendship…I haven’t asked him (Woods) too many questions. I’ve asked him a little bit about chipping, but his interpretation of what he feels is very different from anyone else. That’s why he’s great. So, the way he explains certain things just never makes sense in anyone else’s head other than his.”
But Bhatia gave a glimpse into the tough mindset that has led to the PGA Tour wins for a player who was marked as a special talent while a teenager. “I just apply pressure consistently”, he said. “Again, the cards have to fall my way. Part of it is luck, and part of it is the pressure that I was able to put on each of those players.”
His three playoffs were different. At the 2023 Barracuda Championship where the win turned a special temporary membership into a permanent PGA Tour card, he sank a 15-foot birdie putt on the 18th in regulation while Patrick Rogers missed his birdie putt and then bogeyed the first playoff hole. A two-putt par was enough for Bhatia.
At the Valerie Texas Open in 2024, Denny McCarthy birdied eight of the last nine holes to catch up with him “When he made his putt on 18, I had to make it to get into the playoff. And when I apply that pressure, making that putt, it takes some sort of wind out of their sails.”
If that gave a peep into his mindset, at the Arnold Palmer, Bhatia reeled off four birdies from the 10th hole, hit a great 6-iron to eagle the 16th and drew level with Berger on the 18th. Under pressure, Berger missed an eight-foot par putt in the first playoff hole.
Bhatia, his close friend Sahith Theegala – “we live five minutes from each other” — and Sudarshan Yellamaraju — the 24-year-old Canadian of Indian origin was tied fifth in the Players Championship where Bhatia was T13 — are players Indian golfers can seek inspiration from.
But will Indian fans cheer more for him or Shubhankar Sharma—the last Indian winner on the European tour—this week? “That’s a good one, feel like we both have a pretty good following…regardless of who is leading, everyone would be rooting for all of us.”
