Hatton uses his own anger to fuel charge
WHEN Tyrrell Hatton angrily tossed his ball into the burn after missing a putt on the first, he seemed set to ‘get in my own way’ again.
Seventeen holes and six birdies later, the sometimes irascible Englishman had constructed a 66 and could smile at himself as he is more prone to do off the course.
Finishing on eight under par, he is well-placed for the weekend at a place which holds few secrets from him after previous successes. Selfcontrol will be needed if he is to replicate his two Dunhill Links titles, achieved in very different autumnal conditions.
Hatton enjoys a self-berating monologue when things fall short of perfection, although these can be beneficial if they stop at a certain point.
‘If I get too annoyed and I get in my own way, then it’s a problem,’ he said. ‘But if I hit a bad shot and I let it out, then it’s not going to harm me. It would be worse for me if I try and act like everything’s fine because it’s just not my character.
‘Almost, for me, I wouldn’t even think about some of the stuff I say and it just flies out of the gate. Obviously it’s not well-liked, which is fine. But it’s just me, I’m not trying to offend anyone.’
By the time he holed a 35-footer on the 10th he was flying, but he knows his past record at the home of golf guarantees nothing.
‘The course is very different from how we play in October, also the pin positions are a lot tighter,’ he said.
The pace of play at the celebrityspecked Dunhill is notoriously slow, and experience of that will have helped.
Coming up close behind him on the leaderboard was US Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick, whose seven-birdie 66 also leaves him poised to launch a challenge from six under.
Some can get distracted playing with Tiger Woods, but the only emotion he allowed himself were the goosebumps he felt walking up the 18th in the shadow of the shrunken champion.
He was more exasperated about how much time everything was taking, even on a course where the shared greens are bound to cause congestion.
‘It’s an issue that it is taking like six hours and nothing is done about it,’ said Fitzpatrick. ‘I know there isn’t anything to do about it, but I don’t know, I guess it’s just about the golf course.
‘Maybe it needs tweaks, I don’t know what the answer is. But it just shouldn’t take six hours and nine minutes to get round. Like I don’t care where you play, I just think that’s stupid.’ Everything Sheffield touches in golf right now turns to at least silver, if not gold, and his fellow Hallamshire club member Barclay Brown showed that his first-day surge was not a one-off.
The 21-year-old amateur snaffled three birdies on the last four holes to also finish on six-under with an impressive 70, putting him in pole position to take the Silver Medal.
Making it through right on the cut line last night was Wandsworthbased world No 1,779 Robert Dinwiddie. The bottlenecks meant he finished the first day at 10.10pm, but in joint third place. He slipped back to evens yesterday with a five-over 77.
During lockdown, Dinwiddie — who has come all the way through the pre-qualifying event — made ends meet by working as a labourer for a friend’s building company, fitting out houses in the posher parts of Surrey.
Bogeying three out of five holes after the turn, the 39-year-old clung on to par his last four and that ensured he was staying on for the weekend.