Tyrrell Hatton blames a “little mark” on the 17th green for a late bogey which hit his hopes of a first Major title in Augusta after what was a stellar round two at the Masters
Tyrrell Hatton admitted he looked “stupid” after missing a one-foot putt at the Masters. But the fiery LIV Golf star blamed a “little mark” on the 17th green for the “ridiculous” lip out while confessing he cannot read the Augusta National putting surfaces. “It’s just hit and hope,” he said.
Hatton, 33, is still in contention to win his first Major as he goes into the weekend three shots behind halfway leader Justin Rose. Yet the world No.18 could have been even closer without late bogeys at 16 and 17 in his second round. He had to hole a 10-foot bogey putt on the 17th green to avoid a double bogey before carding a level-par 70 to sit on five-under par.
“Naturally disappointed,” Hatton said. “I have four dropped shots today and probably three out of the four shouldn’t really have happened.
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“I mean, 17 is just like ridiculous. Obviously tapping in there and hitting a little mark and goes straight left and lips out left and all of a sudden you look stupid. But I don’t really know what to say about that. When you hit a decent putt from a foot, you expect it to go in.
“It’s late in the day and there was rain last night, and when the sun gets to a certain height, you can kind of see more of the blemishes. Yeah, that green had a ton of footprints, and it’s just one of those things that you’re never really going to get around. Sometimes they bobble in for you, and obviously that time it bobbled a miss for me.”
Hatton is renowned as a superb putter but he always struggles on the Augusta National greens and he four-putted the 18th green for a painful double bogey at the end of his third round last year.
“I just don’t hole putts from that 15-foot range,” said the Hero Dubai Desert Classic winner. “I just struggle reading them, and that’s been the consistent theme for the nine times that I’ve played it. I’m a good putter, and I just don’t get these greens. So it’s frustrating to come off the course and feel like you kind of have shot the worst score that you could every time.
“I’ve given myself a lot of opportunities these two days, and there’s been times where it’s been pretty tricky and for the most part distance-wise we’ve been pretty good. I haven’t looked at the stats, but I imagine they’re not very pretty reading in terms of where I am strokes gained from inside 20 feet.
“I don’t really know what else I can do. I see the line and I feel like I’m hitting my start line but then there’s putts that break more than I think they will or I feel like then I’ve chosen a good line and then it doesn’t even get close to turning in, and it doesn’t make sense to me. It’s just hit and hope, I think.”
But Hatton, who finished tied ninth here last year, is still happy to be in contention going into the third round at the start of the tournament. “Yeah,” he said. “Normally when I’m walking up 18 on a Friday, I’m very stressed out because I’m like on the cut line or whatever. In one sense it was nice to walk up there and know that I couldn’t even mess that one up around here. But yeah, I would have taken that before I teed off yesterday.”
