Another near miss for Akshay Bhatia, still feeling his way through pro golf at 18
The dream died, at least for this summer, somewhere on the 15th hole. Maybe in the creek running across the fairway. Maybe in the bunker short of the green. Maybe in the six feet surrounding the hole. Maybe any and all of them.
A crazy, up-and-down, boom-or-bust day finally busted for Akshay Bhatia on the 15th at Sedgefield Country Club, when all the missed fairways and missed putts came back to haunt him at once. With that double-bogey 7 — drive in the water, third shot in the bunker and three putts from 5 ½ feet — Bhatia slipped off the cut line at the Wyndham Championship and into oblivion.
He knew, standing on the 15th tee, something wasn’t right: Not only was he playing with an unfamiliar driver after his preferred shaft cracked on Monday while being regripped, it felt like he was swinging the club 150 miles an hour.
Therein lies the lesson of the 18-year-old’s six missed cuts on the PGA Tour this summer: It’s one thing to be able to play the game at this level. It’s another to be able to play it with your heart beating out of your chest, with the cut line lurking on every scoreboard, even without the roars from the galleries.
Course management is one thing. Adrenaline management is another. At 18, that’s a lesson hard learned.
“Another experience under my belt,” Bhatia said after finishing the Wyndham at 1-over par. “I’ve just got to get comfortable with the feeling of the second round. It seems to happen obviously quite too often. But there’s a lot to take from this week. I’ll look back at it and hopefully learn from it and move on.”
There is no Q School this fall, no easy on-ramp onto the tour in 2021. Bhatia is out of bullets for a while. So for now, it’s back to Wake Forest. Back to the practice tee. Back to his coach at Lonnie Poole. Back to square one.
“Start from scratch,” Bhatia said.
This audacious plan to skip college and jump directly into pro golf never had any guarantees attached to it. Bhatia’s physical talent is obvious to anyone. He looks younger and skinnier than his older peers, but not out of place. But they have countless rounds and countless years at this level, and he has all of eight tournaments on the PGA or Korn Ferry tours.
If anything, his near misses last fall and near miss again this weekend — he was two shots ahead of the cut line as he made the turn Friday, only to shoot a 5-over 40 on the back nine — underline how close he is. But his round Friday, full of three-putts and missed fairways, also showed how those very fine margins can widen into chasms at this level.
He started terribly — bogey-double-bogey — then rallied to birdie five of the next six holes. He walked off the ninth green in great shape, the weekend laid out before him. He was still hanging in there when he got to the 15th tee after three bogeys, a rare par and a birdie to start the nine, but managed to find the creek that runs short and left of the fairway. After a drop, his third shot was short in a greenside bunker but he got within less than 6 feet of the hole to give himself a chance to save par and his weekend.
But he ran the downhill putt well past the hole and missed the comebacker for his fifth three-putt of the day. Another on 18 made it six. At 1-over par, at least three shots off the pace, it was still yet another close call: Bhatia walked off the ninth green after three straight birdies with his future in his hands.
“Walking off nine, I felt pretty good,” Bhatia said.
He finished ahead of at least five major winners this week. Now even he’s not sure what’s next. Just that there’s something.
“It’s a long journey ahead of me,” Bhatia said. “It’s not going to come right away. I’m only 18 years old. There’s only so much you can expect at this age. Eventually something good’s going to happen. I’ve just got to stick to my process and not get down on myself. That’s not going to help me out. One tournament, it’s going to click.”
This story was originally published August 14, 2020 at 3:16 PM.
