Akshay Bhatia’s Unique Path To Professional Golf
Photo courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
April 30. 2023
Akshay Bhatia finished fourth at the Mexico Open golf championship at Vidanta Villarta in Mexico today. This was Bhatia’s sixth event this season on the U.S. Professional Golf Association (PGA) Tour, the pre-eminent golf tour in the world.
There is something about tropical places which jives with him, he said. In March, Bhatia earned a temporary PGA Tour membership after finishing second at the Puerto Rico Open. Last season, he won the Bahamas Open, which is part of the Korn Ferry Tour, the junior tour where a high rank enables professional golfers to qualify for the PGA Tour. Like Mexico, both Puerto Rico and the Bahamas have tropical climates.
In the final fourth round today, Bhatia, 21-years-old, played in the last three-some with Jon Rahm, 28, from Spain, who won the major Masters Championship last month and is ranked first in the world, and fellow American Tony Finau, 33, ranked 16th. Bhatia was ranked 283rd, before the Mexico Open, which was won by Finau; Rahm finished second..
So far, Bhatia has earned nearly $1.3 million in official prize money as a golf professional. He also earns fees from golf equipment maker Callaway and other commercial sponsors.
Recently Bhatia started using the AimPoint putting method. His putting speed has “been way better” and he is “just a little more confident where I’m aiming the ball…and I roll it very well on a consistent basis,” he told the media after the third round in Mexico. In today’s round, though, Bhatia’s putting was weak: he needed 32 putts, five more than he did in yesterday’s third round.
In his junior years Bhatia was labelled by the media as a “phenom” and a “sensation.” In 2019, he was the first high school student to play on the U.S. Walker Cup team, the golf contest held every odd year between amateurs from the U.S. against those from Great Britain and Ireland.
In 2017 and again in 2018, Bhatia won the Boys Junior PGA Championship. In 2017, he had an undefeated 3-0-0 record that helped lead the U.S. team to a 14-10 victory over the International Team in the Junior President’s Cup.
Bhatia was born and grew up in Northridge, a suburb of Los Angeles. He took to golf watching his older sister Rhea. She is on the women’s golf team at Queens University, Charlotte, North Carolina, where she is studying communications. She is also interning as a mentor for young golfers on the Peggy Kirk Bell Junior Girls Golf Tour.
Their father Sonny – who plays golf on weekends - and mother Renu Bhatia are immigrants from India. In 2011, the family moved to Raleigh, North Carolina where Bhatia got to play on better golf courses. He also enjoys bowling.
“Just because it hasn’t been done, doesn’t make it impossible,” is the title of Bhatia’s Instagram feed, which has over 140,000 followers.
Indeed, Bhatia is unlike the typical professional golfer in several ways. Though 6 feet tall, he is skinny weighing only 130 pounds (59 Kg). Rahm is 6’ 2” and weighs 220 lbs; Finau is 6’ 4” and weighs 200 lbs; and Sahith Theegala, 25-years-old, the other Indian American on the PGA Tour and ranked 24th in the world, is 6’3” and 200 lbs.
Yet Bhatia’s long limbs and “rubber-band elasticity allows him to generate a swing speed of around 125 miles per hour,” similar to that of the other top golfers, notes Golf Digest. Bhatia’s drives average 301 yards in length.
“I’ve never seen someone hit the ball as well as he does, and I’ve seen a lot,” swing coach George Gankas, who has worked with Bhatia since he was 13, told Golf Digest. “He’s got a gift. His work ethic is also off the charts, and he loves the game.”
Bhatia was schooled at home finishing from Penn Foster High School, an online for-profit school. Several U.S. colleges, with top rated golf programs, were eager to recruit Bhatia. But, in 2019, at age 17, Bhatia turned professional, bypassing competing as a college student, the route to sharpen golf skills favored by most golfers from Tiger Woods, Stanford University, Rahm, Arizona State, to Theegala, Pepperdine.
During his first season as a pro, Bhatia failed to qualify past the first two rounds in the first six tournaments. The next year, he was also cut after two rounds at seven of his eleven tournament starts.
Last year, his win at the season-opening Bahamas Great Exuma Classic was just twelve days before his 20th birthday. He became the third youngest winner in Korn Ferry Tour history. Bhatia, though, went on to miss 13 cuts in 24 starts and failed to earn entry into the PGA Tour.
His goal for 2023 was to finish first on the Korn Ferry Tour and get into the PGA Tour. But finishing second at the Puerto Rican Open in March gave him “just a different path” of entry into the PGA Tour. “I can't believe I'm crying, oh, my God," Bhatia told golfchannel.com after the tournament.
Before the final round in Puerto Rico, Bhatia told his mental coach Greg Cartin that he creates stories in his head like, “What if I play bad?” Cartin told him, according to a PGA Tour blog, that while OK to create stories, “getting back to the reality of trying to hit this golf shot, is the biggest thing.”
Bhatia added that, “Since I was a little kid, I’ve…dreamed about being the best player in the world. And now I have the opportunity to do it.”
FOR MORE UNIQUE STORIES ON INDIANS AND INDIA:
For access to stories each week email: gitimescontact@gmail.com
or follow via LINKEDIN or TWITTER or FACEBOOK
(c) All rights reserved. Copyright under United States Laws.
