Akshay Bhatia will be home this weekend.
One tournament into his life as a pro, the 17-year-old from North Carolina missed his first cut at the Sanderson Farms Championship. But he also served notice to anyone watching that his game more than justifies his decision to forgo college and chase a career on the PGA Tour.
“I know I can compete out here,” Bhatia said after rounds of two-under and two-over left him at even par for the tournament. “I shot under par in my first go-’round as a pro. I’ve just gotta do what I need to do.”
Bhatia walked off the first green in his second round on track not just to impress, but to make the cut: a birdie moved him to three-under for the week. With just one bogey in his first 21 holes, Bhatia seemed three hours away from securing a weekend tee time in Mississippi.
But a weather-interrupted first round on Thursday pressed Bhatia into a 31-hole tour of duty on Friday, beginning with the sun barely above the pines at 7 a.m., with perhaps 10 minutes between the end of his first round and the beginning of his second. Bhatia unwrapped his lunch while he walked down the first fairway. He looked like a kid hurrying on his way to a summer job.
. . .
The idea of a 17-year-old on the PGA Tour will, inevitably, strike some as a half-baked idea. Whether Bhatia’s plan ultimately works out remains to be seen, but any degree of failure will not be for lack of planning: Bhatia was an eighth-grader when he told his parents that he didn’t want to go to college.
“It wasn’t a decision against college,” Bhatia said. “I knew what I wanted to do: I wanted to play golf.”
Akshay Bhatia (pink shirt) watches an iron shot fly toward the green on the back nine at the Country Club of Jackson during the second round of the Sanderson Farms Championship.
His brush with making the cut at the Country Club of Jackson is strong evidence that Bhatia can compete with his new colleagues. Even so, Bhatia is literally a boy among men, both literally and in appearance. No one will ever accuse Bhatia of being physically intimidating. He is built like a fistful of asparagus: long and upright, with a bunch of healthy-looking thin parts that come together in the middle.
If Bhatia is nervous, then he does not show it. His gait is long and comfortable, as if he’s done this a hundred times. But he unmistakably has not: Bhatia looks the part of a teenage boy, skinny with a fresh face dominated by dark, chunky glasses — a little geeky, but in that friendly way that became popular at some point. He is conversational — joking and smiling with his caddie, and talking animatedly with Sebastian Cappelen, one of his playing partners at the Sanderson.
His left-handed swing is equally comfortable, but unlike Bhatia, the swing is not childlike. It is long, wide, and athletic. His driver backswing stops just short of parallel, his downswing quick but controlled. Bhatia is not the longest player in the field, but he had no trouble keeping up with (and occasionally outdistancing) his playing partners. According to the PGA Tour’s Shotlink data, Bhatia tallied 12 drives of more than 300 yards in his two rounds at the Sanderson — but he also hit only 14 of 28 fairways.
More often than not, Bhatia showed a knack for avoiding trouble altogether — but when he found it, he deftly navigated out. On Thursday, Bhatia pulled his drive on the par-5 14th hole badly to the right, landing on a slight upslope in thick rough, with a huge, twiggy tree between his ball and the fairway. After assessing his lie, Bhatia began looking upward.
“You’re thinking of going over?” his caddie asked, with a touch of skepticism in his voice.
“Yes,” Bhatia calmly replied.
A moment passed. “Maybe on the left side, with a little bit of draw?” the caddie suggested.
“Yes,” Bhatia said, confirming what he clearly was already thinking. Bhatia asked for his pitching wedge and hit precisely the shot that he’d dialed up, wrapping his ball around the tree and dropping it safely between two fairway bunkers. Three shots later, he salvaged par.
That’s not to say that Bhatia is above listening. During the back half of his first round on Friday morning, Bhatia found himself off the fairway on the par-5 third, his ball sitting squarely in CCJ’s thick rough — but with just enough of his ball’s back half showing to tempt Bhatia into hitting his 3-wood. Bhatia’s caddie suggested a wedge instead. They compromised on a mid-iron, which Bhatia played safely back into the fairway. A 95-yard wedge shot later, Bhatia drained a 10-footer for birdie.
From the fairway, Bhatia’s iron shots are deliciously clean, with a snappy clckTHUMP to their contact. And he has a knack for putting his way out of scrapes (on Friday, he read almost all his putts himself).
Akshay Bhatia (left) judges a putt on Friday morning at the 2019 Sanderson Farms Championship.
If Bhatia’s early trip home from Mississippi has any single reason underlying it, it was his inability to cash in on CCJ’s par-5 holes. During Bhatia’s first round on Friday morning, he clobbered his drive 311 yards into the middle of the fairway on the 611-yard fifth hole. With another 300 yards remaining, Bhatia nuked his 3-wood dead on line, perhaps a yard short of the green. But three putts later, none of it mattered, and he walked away with a par — unrewarded for two blistering shots.
“I played a little more conservative than I think I should’ve, and I just didn’t take care of the par-5s,” Bhatia said. “You can’t do that against these guys, because they’re gonna eat the par-5s up.”
By the back half of Bhatia’s second round, he clearly was out of gas. His shoulders hung lower than in the morning; his gait less quick. On the 14th hole (another par-5), Bhatia recovered from an off-line drive and laid his third shot perhaps five feet from the hole. But the putt broke farther right than he estimated; yet again, he left a par-5 without a birdie. And on the short par-4 15th hole, his tee shot missed well left of the fairway, but his pitch from 40 yards left him a look at birdie from 18 feet on the edge of the green. The chance ran just by the left edge; his putter was no longer saving him.
Still, after a tap-in birdie on No. 17, Bhatia walked to the last tee sitting at one-under for the tournament, needing a birdie on the long, 505-yard par-4 18th for a chance at the weekend (at the moment, the projected cut line was two-under). Bhatia addressed the ball, pulled his driver back just short of parallel, and moved through the ball as quickly as he had all afternoon. For a moment no longer than a breath, he watched the ball fly — then pointed left and broke the silence: “LEFT!”
His iron shot into the 18th didn’t even reach the greenside bunker. He was spent. A few minutes later, Bhatia limped away — almost literally — with a round-closing bogey. His 70-74 added up to even par for the week — a good debut, but on a tour where good frequently is not good enough, a few strokes short of making the weekend.
. . .
At a press conference the day before the first round, someone asked Bhatia about his expectations for the Sanderson.
“Expectations, I mean, I don’t really have any,” Bhatia insisted. “What happens, happens, happens. I’m not going to dwell if I don’t play well or go ballistic if I do play well.”
Meeting reporters after his 31-hole day on Friday, Bhatia didn’t dwell, but his disappointment was palpable. He had the weekend within his grasp, and it got away. That never stops stinging, much less in your pro debut. Call it expectations, or call it something else. Either way, Bhatia had wanted it, and it had gotten away.
Still, Bhatia’s debut was nothing if not successful. He shot under par in his first full round, then grinded through a brutally long day in the late-September Mississippi heat to give himself a last-minute chance to make the cut on the world’s toughest golf tour. Whatever becomes of Bhatia’s professional career, Thursday and Friday in Mississippi offered little more than a blink of a glimpse. But Bhatia was comfortable, and he was competitive. He was ready. He is ready.
“I’d like people to take away that my emotions are pretty good starting out here,” Bhatia said. “If I have my A-game, I feel like I can win out here. This week, I had a C-game. I definitely could tighten some stuff, and it’s a little different coming back and playing 31 holes today. That’s a lot of golf, especially in the heat. I know I’m good enough to be out here. It’s not easy to win out of the gate.”
. . .
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