Akshay Bhatia Wins His First U.S. PGA Golf Title
August 1, 2023
Akshay Bhatia won the Barracuda Championship at the Tahoe Mountain Club, California last weekend, his first United States Professional Golf Association (PGA) Tour title.
"It's obviously been a really tough road," Bhatia, 21-years-old, said after the win. "I've had a lot of up, a lot of down. A lot of good, a lot of bad. But I knew I was going to get here. It was just matter of time. For it to happen this year…and to get it done today was, I can't even describe it…your brain and everything, you can feel all this adrenaline, all this shakiness. It's pretty crazy."
Bhatia started the final fourth round trailing the leader Patrick Rodgers, 31, who is ranked 77th in the world. On the 18th green, Bhatia holed a 15 feet putt to birdie and tie Rodgers. He then went on to beat Rodgers in the sudden death playoff.
Following the win, Bhatia moved up in world rankings to 109th, up from 283rd in April. The Barracuda title earned him $684,000 in prize money, bringing his total official earnings to $1.9 million. He also earns fees from golf equipment maker Callaway and other commercial sponsors.
In 2022, Bhatia won the Bahamas Great Exuma Classic, which is part of the Korn Ferry Tour, the junior tour where a high rank enables professional golfers to qualify for the PGA Tour. Bhatia, though, went on to miss 13 cuts in 24 starts and failed to earn entry into the PGA Tour.
In March, Bhatia earned a temporary PGA Tour membership after finishing second at the Puerto Rico Open. So far Bhatia has played in 18 PGA competitions, finishing in the top ten four times. Last week’s PGA win gives him full membership of the PGA tour.
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). Sahith Theegala, 25-years-old, the other Indian American on the PGA Tour and ranked 36th 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, 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.
Bhatia’s 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.”
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