Let’s play simple’: 3 fascinating nuggets of wisdom from major contenders
Three attitudes. Three situations. Three quotes that’ll make you think about golf, how they play it and how you might play it, too. And from three golfers who each could win a major championship on Sunday.
Here they are.
Charley Hull arrived at Sahalee’s 17th tee red-hot. It was Saturday and she’d birdied No. 10 and then No. 11 and then No. 12; suddenly she was three under par for the day, four under for the tournament and had vaulted her way near the top of the leaderboard. The gallery around her grew and she’d missed the green at No. 16 but had saved par there, too, clanking an eight-footer off the flagstick and in; her pin-in putting is a part of her iconography along with her Malbon fits and the occasional
But then, as she stepped to the tee at the iconic 17th, a par-3 surrounded by water, an intrusive thought arrived.
“Truthfully, yesterday I hit a shot on the green 30 feet from the pin. Didn’t think nothing of it,” the Englishwoman said later. “My mate yesterday goes, ‘What happened to you on 17? You nearly hit it in the water.’ I was like, ‘No I didn’t.’
The strange encounter resurfaced as she considered her play. It took her out of the moment.
“So, got to the tee box and I’m thinking to myself, ‘I never nearly hit in the water.’”
Hull’s tee shot never stood a chance; the hole played some 190 yards but her chunked iron shot flew just 157 before splashing down short and right of dry land. She headed to the drop zone, hit the green and three-putted for a deflating triple-bogey 6.