Akshay Bhatia has just one golfer to beat if he hopes to play at Augusta National next week.
Bhatia leads the Texas Open by four shots over Denny McCarthy going into Sunday’s final round. He’s seven up on the next closest contender, Brendon Todd, who’s at 8 under and seven away from Bhatia’s 15 under following rounds of 63-70-68 from the now -350 favorite.
Though he won the Barracuda Championship in a playoff over Patrick Rodgers last year, this is a different caliber of field Bhatia is beating and doing so as the best iron player in the field. This formula is as impressive as it is sustainable.
As long as Akshay Bhatia continues to play his game, the only person who can beat him is … Akshay Bhatia. He knows that and said on Saturday that he was roiling on the inside.
“I was never calm today, and it was the hardest thing to deal with,” said Bhatia. “It’s just so hard, you feel so tense and all these things in your stomach, your mind can kind of go one way. I kept to my game plan. I tried to talk as much as I could to my caddie.”
He wrote a saying on his wrist before the round after talking to his sports psychologist.
“Yeah, it just says ‘race my race,'” said Bhatia. “I’m just going at my own pace, focusing on myself, keeping the blinders right in front of me. I look at that all the time because you can get caught up in a lot of things out here. If I’m just kind of doing my own thing and trying not to let outside stuff bother me, then I just can focus on myself and whatever the outcome is, it is.
Bhatia’s story is well known. He skipped college and turned professional right away, playing his way up through the Korn Ferry Tour ranks and onto the PGA Tour. At just 22 years and three months, he’s younger than some of the amateurs who will be in the Masters next week and far better. Bhatia is in the middle of his best year as a pro with five top 20s in nine PGA Tour starts this year.
This one has been by far the best. He has gained nearly 18 strokes on the field. Even if he shoots even par or something slightly worse tomorrow, that will still likely be enough for him to win the tournament.
“He’s playing really good golf,” said McCarthy, who will be paired with him in the final round. “I know I’m going to have to go out and play another solid round of golf. No pressure. I’m looking forward to the challenge tomorrow. I’m going to go out and try to play some free golf.”
There is a lot at stake on Sunday. Not only Bhatia’s first full field PGA Tour victory but also a bid into what would be his first Masters tournament next week. With the first major being played in just five days, it will be impossible to not at least think about the fact that a win would get him into Augusta National, where he has never teed it up in a tournament.
“If I win, that’s great,” said Bhatia. “I mean, it gets me closer to my goal. Yeah, it doesn’t mean the world to me. I didn’t grow up playing on the PGA Tour necessarily to win just PGA Tour events, I grew up playing and dreaming of winning majors. That’s kind of my main focus for the years to come.”
Surely, Bhatia has a number in mind that he needs tomorrow at TPC San Antonio to win this tournament. I’m guessing it’s not 89, although maybe it is. If the young lefty does go on to win, the field at Augusta National next week will move from 88 players to 89 with Bhatia’s last-minute bid.