Meet Tyrrell Hatton: The man who is British golf's best-kept secret and, quite possibly, its next big star
Exclusive interview: Hatton tells The Independent about growing up with golf, his ambitions and the Lamborghini outside his house
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Your support makes all the difference.Tyrrell Hatton still remembers the shot. He’s about five or six years old, playing in the Wycombe Heights Junior Masters. He’s up against a much older boy, and it’s gone to a three-hole play-off. About 100 yards to the pin.
“I remember hitting a punch 8-iron,” he says. “I remember the shot, and I remember how close it went. Not even 18 inches to the hole. And I ended up winning the tournament.”
And thus begins the story of British golf’s newest and most exciting young talent. They fitted little Tyrrell out with a little green jacket. It was his first title, and he quickly developed a taste for them. Now, two decades on, he gets a text from his manager every Monday with his new world ranking. It currently stands at No17, after a dreamy autumn in which he has won two titles on the bounce and put himself in pole position to qualify for next year’s Ryder Cup.
A Lamborghini is now parked in the driveway of the modest semi-detached house in Marlow where he grew up. Making a success of professional golf has changed the life of Hatton and his family, and yet he admits he can still walk down the street without a soul recognising him. He might find it a touch more difficult this time next year. With his scintillating short game and exuberant on-course celebrations, Hatton is pure box office, golf’s best-kept secret, perhaps even the future of golf in this country.
And yet, his rise has not delighted everyone. Golf’s occasional and curious tendency to declare itself not simply a sport but a sort of moral arbiter has seen Hatton’s on-course demeanour attract more than its fair share of criticism. Former European Tour pro Gary Evans recently tweeted that Hatton needed to “grow up” and that his “on-course whingeing and body language is a disgrace”. Social media hums with the chagrin and abuse of golf watchers who have taken umbrage to… well, it’s hard to say.
For Hatton is neither a club-snapper nor a club-thrower, nor a spitter, nor a time-waster, nor any of the other myriad traits that can turn the golfing public against you. His only crime, as far as anyone can make out, is the occasional sulky reaction to a bad shot. “Sometimes I just get a bit frustrated,” he says. “I’m only human, so I’m going to make mistakes from time to time. As will anyone else with the job that they do. No-one’s perfect. So that’s just the way I am, and that’s how I play.
“Everyone’s going to have their own opinions on how we should do things. That’s just the way of the world. You get some people who say you’ve done a good job, and other people who say you didn't do that very well. You’re always going to get criticism, no matter what you do.” Does he ever read things that are written about him? “If it’s bad stuff, then I try not to,” he says. “I know myself if I’ve made mistakes. I don’t need that kind of opinion.”
The truth is that Hatton is engaging, unfailingly polite company: a little guarded, perhaps, but essentially a kid living the dream. He wants to give something back, too: a couple of months ago, he organised the inaugural Tyrrell Hatton Junior Masters, a version of the tournament that kick-started his own career all those years ago. Ping and Titleist supplied the prizes, and Hatton himself spent the day shaking hands and getting his photograph taken with star-struck kids.
Not so long ago, Hatton was one of those kids. And what strikes you after speaking to him for a while is how thoroughly golf has dominated his life from an early age. He vividly remembers “my mum picking me up from school and taking me straight to the driving range. I’d be there until it got dark, every day of the week.”
School never held much interest for him, and in his final year before leaving at 16 he would often skip lessons in order to play golf. Nor did the conventional world of work: Hatton’s one proper job was a part-time gig at The White Company, earning himself enough petrol money to get to tournaments.
By then, his father Jeff had given up his job in management to take care of his career full-time, making and fitting golf clubs to pay the bills. I point out that investing the family’s entire future in the golfing talent of an 11-year-old boy seems a touch… ambitious. What was the back-up plan? “To be honest, I didn’t have one. I was just hoping it would all work out. You’ve got to have some self-belief. There was certainly no pressure. Only the pressure I put on myself. I was fairly fortunate in that sense.”
Perhaps, conversely, it gives you an idea of just how rare the boy Hatton’s talent was. With a low centre of gravity, a tidy, economical swing and a magician’s touch around the greens, Hatton moved through the junior ranks quickly. At the age of 18, and still an amateur, he qualified for the 2010 Open at St Andrew’s. He turned pro the following year, yet at the start of 2016 he was still on the fringes of the top 100 and familiar only the keenest of golf followers.
What came next was the breakthrough. After claiming second place at the Scottish Open, he made his first major cut at a windswept Troon in the Open Championship, claiming a share of fifth place with Sergio Garcia and Rory McIlroy. Then, in October, he claimed his first title at the Alfred Dunhill Links, equalling the Old Course record with a stunning 62.
After a strong start to 2017, Hatton stood at No14 in the world. But then something strange happened. He missed five cuts in a row over the summer, before curiously storming back to defend his Alfred Dunhill title and then win the Italian Open - the biggest cheque of his career to date - the following week. Hatton, it seems, is one of those players who by turns can blow scorchingly hot and blisteringly cold.
Such is often the fate of the ‘feel’ player, and Hatton freely admits that he is not the sort to sweat out his technical issues on the range. “During my bad spell,” he explains, “I wasn’t playing enough on my weeks off. I was just hitting balls. I’ve never been one to stand on a driving range for hours on end. I just needed to get out there. And the form came back again. It’s certainly exceeded my expectations.”
All of which brings him into strong contention for perhaps the biggest competition of them all: next year’s Ryder Cup on the outskirts of Paris. European captain Thomas Bjorn is a strong admirer, and although there are plenty of points still to be won, a strong finish to the season would virtually guarantee him a place. “I’ve got to play a lot of good golf to make that happen,” he admits. “But I’d like to think that I’d be able to cope with the pressure fairly well.”
One thing Jeff noticed all those years ago, on the fairways of Wycombe Heights, was the way young Tyrrell came alive for the crowd. The bigger the stage, the more he seemed to relish it. And perhaps that still holds true today. Hatton may not be a household name just yet. But you suspect he wouldn’t mind it one bit.
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