NAPA, Calif. – As the longtime PGA professional at El Prado Golf Course in Chino Hills, Calif., Rick Hunter taught his students that if they cheated on the golf course, they wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.
During the third round of the Tour Championship in Atlanta, Sahith Theegala, Hunter’s most famous student, reported a penalty on himself at the third hole, immediately calling over playing partner Xander Schauffele and notifying a rules official that he believed he may have touched a grain of sand in a bunker on his backswing, a violation of Rule 12.2b, testing the sand. Not even video could determine conclusively whether Theegala had grazed the sand but he was docked two strokes. He earned $7.5 million for finishing third but had he not been penalized he would have earned $10 million and tied Collin Morikawa for second place.
“Pretty sure I breached the rules, so I’m paying the price for it, and I feel good about it,” Theegala said after the fact.
His honesty cost him $2.5 million. When pressed on the matter, Theegala said, “I wouldn’t be able to sleep [if I didn’t call the penalty].”
“Sure enough, the exact phrase I always taught him, that’s what he came up with,” Hunter said. “But the way he handled the (infraction) was a reflection of the kind of person he is.”
To Theegala, he simply couldn’t have lived with himself if he hadn’t spoken up on what he described as “90 percent sure” he touched the sand.
Sahith Theegala self-reported a two-stroke penalty for touching the sand with his club during his backswing.
He currently moves from -13 to -11, but will have the opportunity to review the penalty with a rules official following his round. pic.twitter.com/rLAgGJGZ5c
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) August 31, 2024
“I guess it was just the way my dad instilled values in me as a kid with golf specifically and my mom with the non-golf stuff,” he said. “It was just second nature. I felt I did something wrong, I just want to clear it up.”
As for the FedEx Cup playoffs itself, Theegala described it as a rollercoaster ride. He was disappointed in his performance at the FedEx St. Jude Championship, where he finished T-46. Then he injured the hamate bone on his right hand on the Tuesday before the BMW Championship.
“It was just out of place and it was just pressing on a ligament and it was just painful,” he said. “We got it back in. It still hurt a lot, but it was back in.”
He sat out the pro-am but finished dead last in the 50-man field at a tournament for the first time in his career. On the eve of the Tour Championship, he reinjured a rib that had bothered him earlier that year. A team of personal trainers worked on his wrist and other injuries but he still didn’t feel great after his warmup before the opening round of the FedEx Cup finale. Hunter stepped in and dished out the tough love Theegala needed.
“I looked him right in the face,” Hunter recalled, “and I said, ‘Listen, we’re here to do something special.’ I said, ‘Don’t play golf swing, just go ahead and play the game.’ And he looked at me, and he says, ‘OK.’”
“It was just the kick I needed,” Theegala said. “It fired me up.”
Theegala ended up finishing third in the Tour Championship, making 29 birdies for the week, and Theegala called it the best he’s played in a PGA Tour event. Hunter, for one, is confident it could be a turning point in his student’s career.
“Now he knows for sure he can whoop up on these top guys,” Hunter said of his performance in the elite 30-man field of the season’s top finishers. “He needed that.”
This week, Theegala returns to Silverado Resort’s North Course for the Procore Championship, site of his debut PGA Tour victory a year ago. In two weeks, Theegala takes the next step in his career, representing the United States in international competition for the first time at the Presidents Cup in Montreal.
“He was born to do stuff like this. This was part of his purpose in life,” Hunter said. “The boys on a mission, he wants to be one of the best and he’s got the gumption to do it. He’ll never have a so-called perfect swing but, boy, he’ll play with anybody.”