September 2, 2024

On Saturday, during his third round at the Professional Golf Association’s (PGA) TOUR Championship, Sahith Theegala realized his club touched the sand before he hit the ball out of a bunker on the third hole. He told a rules official about it who penalized him two strokes.

“It was an unusual lie and I usually pick up the club and take it back, but because of the lie, right on my backswing, I felt like I moved a few grains of sand for sure,” Theegala said in a post-round media interview according to PGATour.com. The tournament was held at the East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta.

Theegala, 26-years-old, may have admitted breaking a rule to avoid a worse fate. As he told the media, had the incident been reported after he finished his third round he would have been disqualified. This would have meant personal embarrassment as well as $0 in prize money. Or Theegala was just being honest. TV replays do not clearly show any movement of the sand before Theegala’s shot.

Theegala was loudly cheered at the TOUR championship, as he is at other tournaments, by a group of fans, which include relatives and friends, led by his father Murali (Muralidhar) Theegala, mother Karuna Theegala and his girlfriend Juju (Julianna) Chan. Chan, who met Theegala while they were students at Pepperdine in 2017, is a competitive swimmer.    

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