HATTON COMPLAINS IT’S TOO TOUGH IN THE ROUGH

TYRRELL HATTON was unlikely to win friends in these parts by criticising one of the signature features of Portrush. The 16th, Calamity Corner, is not a hole that forgives and forgets, and the 27-year-old Englishman’s mistake of flighting the ball on the breeze too far right on the monster par-three had been heavily punished — too heavily, he thought. He had been five-under at the turn, one shot off the lead, but then the double bogey that came from twice failing to get out of the thick, sharply sloping rough just off the 16th green knocked him off the leaderboard just when conditions were ripe for scoring. ‘I tried my best to move the ball, and couldn’t move it. It’s pretty tough. I don’t think it’s a good hole anyway,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you walk off many holes or many par-threes at 230 yards and think that’s a good hole. It’s maybe a bit too harsh if you can’t move the golf ball when you’re seven yards right of the edge of the green. ‘The ball is so far below your feet, so I had no choice but to just kind of hit and hope. I ended up hitting it harder and harder.’ However, he lives to fight the weekend from a decent enough position at an event in which he has missed the cut four times in six appearances. Hatton is appealing to watch because he has an open window on his soul when playing. His face is a kaleidoscope of expressions, agonising over every near miss and delighting in each success. There have been times in his career when this has spilt over into a perceived brattishness, although it was not as if he succumbed to a fit of fury after his tangle with Calamity. ‘I felt like I stayed pretty calm and composed, and that’s one of the toughest things for me,’ admitted Hatton, who was also realistic about the challenges of the venue. ‘The rough is pretty brutal around the whole golf course,’ he said. ‘Obviously the aim is to stay out of it. Sadly I didn’t do that and I got punished.’ While he was unlucky at the 16th, he had ridden his good fortune on the very tight drive off the 11th when he also fired it into the midst of some dense bracken. By chance, the ball avoided being buried and he was able to dig it out, hit to just over the back of the green, then save par with a wonderful 30-foot putt over undulating ground. But, as he acknowledged, the best solution is to avoid the rough in the first place.