Tyrrell Hatton won the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship on Sunday for a record third time after a finish somewhat akin to the previous week’s Open de España. Then, Ángel Hidalgo, who was ranked 398th in the world going into the event, had the better of Jon Rahm at the second extra hole.
On Sunday at the Old Course, Hatton, one of 14 LIV golfers in the field, was chased down the stretch by Nicolas Colsaerts, who had slipped to 1,349th in the rankings last September. The descent was related to illness. He suffers from membranous nephropathy, a kidney complaint, and he has pondered whether to switch golf for commentating. He was still only 685th at the start of the DP World Tour’s annual visit to St Andrews, Kingsbarns and Carnoustie.
The pair were level with two holes to play at the Old Course, but, when it came to the last hole, with both players having driven just short of the green, Hatton came up with a little pitch which showed him at his best. He left the ball 3 feet short of the hole, and Colsaerts could only respond with a putt through the Valley of Sin that came up 8 feet shy. The Belgian failed to make the par putt.
“I definitely wouldn’t have had it back,” Hatton said of his penultimate shot. “Mind you, I found it pretty nerve-racking to have to hole a 3-footer.”
He breathed a sigh of relief when the ball dropped to complete a winning 24-under-par tally of 264 and kissed his putter, no doubt by way of making up for those occasions when he gives it a hard time. Then he had a hug for his father, Jeff, who had helped him to second place behind Thorbjørn Olesen and Dermot Desmond in the team event. “It was great for me to win in front of him for a first time,” said Hatton, who won $850,000 from the $5 million prize fund, “and even if we didn’t win together, he enjoyed the experience.”
Now the winner is taking four weeks off before playing in the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship and DP World Tour Championship in consecutive weeks next month in Dubai in a bid to win a place in next year’s European Ryder Cup team.
Hatton had not been a bit surprised that Colsaerts, in spite of the fact that he hadn’t been playing well for the last few years, had fought till the end. “He’s a great guy and he’s still a fantastic competitor,” he said. What had told Hatton that Colsaerts was still made of the right stuff was the degree to which he had filled the players with the right thoughts when he served as a vice-captain in last year’s Ryder Cup.
“When you finish like that, it’s a bit bittersweet,” the 41-year-old Colsaerts, a three-time tour winner and member of Europe’s winning 2012 Ryder Cup team, said of the missed opportunity at the last and a disappointing run of holes around the turn. “I was anxious, but I was focussed – really tuned in – and I was able to hit a few amazing shots down the last couple of holes.”
Now he wants to regain his DP World Tour card. He will get starts because of this finish but has no current membership status.
Tommy Fleetwood, like Hatton something of a major-championship expert but one without a big win to his name, finished third. It is his seventh top 10 in the tournament.
The week, it has to be said, was one more to explain why the regular tours and the LIV players should get together. It worked.
The father-and-son combinations made for entertaining viewing. Sky Sports TV compared the swings of Hatton and the father who enjoyed “the whole amateur coaching thing with Tyrrell” rather more than he enjoyed playing himself. He wondered if that had something to do with the fact that his son, at age 6, had beaten him without needing any strokes.
This was the elder Hatton’s second appearance in the championship and, swings apart, nothing fascinated the crowd more than the pair’s similar gesticulations after a poor shot. The younger Hatton, though, was the more alarming of the two when, after making a bogey at the 14th, bent over double and had the look of one who was piercing his tummy-button with the end of his putter.
Robert MacIntyre and his father, Douglas, who were partnering with each other for the first time, finished in a share of 11th in the team event. They would have been a whole lot higher but for Bob’s back-to-back bogeys at the 16th and 17th – a finish which had him threatening to kill off his clubs before taking a few weeks’ break from the game. However, he cheered up at the mention of his dad who, though nervous at the start of the week, got better and better toward the end.
Rory McIlroy, meanwhile, was not so sure that his father, Gerry, making his eighth appearance in the Dunhill, was any the better for playing with him over the years. Though they missed the cut on this occasion, McIlroy acknowledged that his father had no trouble in playing well in front of a crowd. With a mischievous grin, he suggested that his dad had always shone in that department.
It was not just the professionals and the celebrities who made headlines last week. The Old Tom Morris statue debuted to the fore behind the R&A clubhouse and, on Saturday, it was a dog which made off with the golf ball which had just been knocked onto Carnoustie’s 15th green by Gareth Bale, the ex-Tottenham Hotspur and Real Madrid footballer. (The animal in question had been wise enough to steer clear of what looked like an identity parade organised by Tommy Fleetwood and his wife, Claire.)
In keeping with which, the increasing number of dogs at Scottish golf events prompted the question to arise as to when their owners would have to start paying for them.
It may or may not have been in jest, but one of the organisers suggested it was not the worst idea in the world.
Lewine Mair