Akshay Bhatia at home at Wyndham after winning ‘freeing’ 1st title

 

[August 02, 2023]  Akshay Bhatia may still have a ways to go to qualify for the FedEx Cup playoffs, but the precocious 21-year-old has one monkey off his back.

Bhatia won the Barracuda Championship, the alternate event opposite The Open Championship last month, for his first win on the PGA Tour. He was playing on a special temporary membership at the time, and the win earned him full exemption on tour through 2025.

He's teeing it up this week at the Wyndham Championship for the first time as a full PGA Tour member.

"I don't think my mindset changes," Bhatia said Tuesday ahead of the regular-season finale in Greensboro, N.C. "Obviously, I want to go out and play good golf and have a good week and earn my spot into the Playoffs next week. But I think it's a little more freeing. I know how to do it, I have done it, I know the emotions that go into it."

Bhatia initially thought the win would rocket him into the top 70 in FedEx Cup points, but he sits at No. 99 due to the tour's convoluted way of counting Cup points earned by temporary members. His victory didn't net him the points he thought it would.

"The fact that I finished top 10 and then I win and I'm not technically -- I'm not in the playoffs and I don't get the points, it is a little frustrating because you work so hard," Bhatia said on Sirius XM PGA Tour radio this week. "It's not easy to win a PGA Tour event."

But there were no hard feelings Tuesday from the California native now living in nearby Wake Forest, N.C.

"It's nice, it's a very home-feeling event," Bhatia said. "... I'm just looking forward to the week. It's kind of a nice, relaxing event for me versus trying to secure any sort of points or card. It's just kind of go wheel it and, hopefully, have a good week."

Bhatia skipped the college route to turn pro at age 17 and grinded for years without full tour status, coping with an injury and the stoppage in play during the COVID-19 pandemic.

His second-place finish at the Puerto Rico Open in March was enough to earn him special temporary membership for the rest of 2022-23.

Then, that first win finally came on July 23 when he defeated Patrick Rodgers in a playoff at the Barracuda, the tour's only event scored via the Modified Stableford format.

"I don't know how I could explain my journey with the pandemic and being 17, couldn't rent cars, then playing Korn Ferry Tour, winning, then hurting myself," Bhatia said. "It was just a lot of different things went on that I wouldn't have imagined that would happen, but for it to happen now at 21 with special temporary membership, everything that went on this year is pretty gratifying."

Bhatia was asked what one thing he'd tell his former self before he turned pro at such a young age.

"I felt like in junior golf I was always kind of No. 1 in my class and I felt like I was so good that it was going to be easy coming out here, but it really isn't," he said. "You have to do so many -- you have to work so hard to get out here.

"So when I turned pro, I felt like I was ready, but I really wasn't. I've really realized that. Yeah, it's just different. You've got to not practice as much as -- like as much as you want as a kid, you've got to really take care of your body."

--Field Level Media

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