AUGUSTA, Ga. — Woe is Tyrrell Hatton.
The Englishman who defected to LIV Golf to join Jon Rahm’s team earlier this year, finished with a three-putt double bogey to shoot 1-over 73 at Augusta National on Saturday and then used all his mental strength to avoid losing his mind.
“Yeah, it’s tough to take,” he said. “I don’t know how I have to play golf around here to shoot under par. Like it’s now my 23rd tournament round. I’ve got four rounds under par.”
Hatton played alongside Tiger Woods and as a result was in a featured group and the microphones caught his dropping a few choice words along the way. But the three putt at 18 sent him near the edge of combustion.
“I don’t know what to say about the last there. The greens are getting quicker, but I’m putting up the hill. I actually felt like I’d left the putt a foot short,” he said of his 25-foot birdie putt.
It crawled about 5 feet past the hole and then Hatton lipped out the par and it rolled more than 5 feet away. Hatton smiled in disgust and leaned on his putter. He was stunned that he had a longer putt for bogey than he had had for par. He missed the next one too, tapping in for a double and dropping to 3-over par after 54 holes.
“It’s brutal for me at the moment to be honest,” he said. “I don’t know what I have to do around this place to get some good fortune and actually shoot under par and get a score that I deserve.”
Asked his level of frustration at the moment, he did his best to restrain himself: “Yeah, I feel like I’m putting on a brave face for what I want to talk about or say.”
In 2022, Hatton famously raged that Augusta National is “unfair.” He said, “You can hit good shots here and not get any reward for it. It’s unfair at times. I don’t agree with that.”
Hatton did acknowledge playing with Woods was special for him, but he struggled to put the end of his round behind him.
“The kid inside of me playing with Tiger at the Masters, like that’s really cool. That’s certainly not lost on me,” he said. “But at the same time, I’m going out there competing, trying to put together the best round I can and trying to move up the leaderboard, which for 17 1/2 holes I feel like I did a really good job of. Yeah, I’m devastated, to be honest.”
Hatton said he would need some time to regain his calm and that his goal for the final round was to shoot low enough to finish in the top-12 and earn an invite back for next year.
“I’ve got 18 holes tomorrow to try to claw them shots back, but it’s just a brutal way to finish the round,” he said. “I just wish I could score better around this golf course.”