Tyrrell

Hatton

Tyrrell Hatton was just 13 months old when he first swung a golf club. By the age of three, he was playing the par-three course at his local club in Buckinghamshire, to the west of London.

His dad Jeff was his coach from the start. Jeff said: “I enjoyed the whole amateur coaching thing with Tyrrell more than I enjoyed playing myself. That’s probably because Tyrrell beat me off gross when he was six.”

Tyrrell was an intense competitor from an early age, and he turned pro in August 2011, two months before his 20th birthday. He had found out that, despite an excellent record as an amateur, he would not be picked for the Great Britain & Ireland team in that year’s Ryder Cup.

“The way I was on the golf course, my face didn’t fit in that environment,” he said many years later.

His first win on the Jamega Pro Golf Tour followed within a month. Hatton remembers picking up a £5,000 prize for his three-shot victory and buying a 50-inch television from his winnings.

By 2014, Tyrrell Hatton had qualified for the European Tour, and his first top-level victory followed in 2016 when he won the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship by four strokes.

He repeated that feat in 2017, this time by three shots, and followed up with victory in the Italian Open. By now he was established in the top 50 in the world, a position he maintained for many years.

In 2020, Hatton won for the first time on the PGA Tour. His triumph came at the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill, Florida. He won by a single shot from future LIV Golf competitor Marc Leishman, with big names like Bryson DeChambeau and Rory McIlroy trailing in his wake.

That same year, Hatton won the BMW PGA Championship, one of the flagship events on the European Tour. A final round of 67 gave him a four-shot victory and underlined his status as one of the world’s top players.

Like any leading professional golfer, Tyrrell Hatton places victory in one of golf’s four premier events high on his wish list.

He has finished in the top 10 at all four, but has made the top five only once, when a final round of 67 earned him a tie for fifth at the 2016 British Open.

His most recent serious tilt at a Major came in the 2024 Masters. A final round of 69, only his second sub-70 score at Augusta, lifted him to a tie for ninth – a clear improvement on his previous Masters finishes and a sign of greater things to come. 

Tyrrell Hatton admits that the Ryder Cup is “pretty special” and he aims to be a member of the European team as many times as he can.

He was part of the side that won emphatically in France in 2018, and in 2023 he formed a powerful partnership with future LIV team-mate Jon Rahm in France. The pair won both their foursomes matches, and Hatton bolstered his Ryder Cup record with a singles victory over Brian Harman as Europe took the trophy again.

He was also in the European team that was heavily beaten in 2021. But Hatton later insisted: “Even when we got battered at Whistling Straits, we gave it our best and had a great week together.”

Team golf clearly appeals to Tyrrell Hatton, which was one of the reasons why he was receptive to an approach from Ryder Cup pal Jon Rahm to join him in the LIV Golf Legion XIII line-up.

He joined LIV Golf before the start of the 2024 season and later said: “The team aspect played a big part, and being with Jon as well was a huge draw. I like the schedule, traveling around the world and playing in different places.”

The highlight of his first season with LIV Golf was his superb victory by six shots at the event in Nashville. Hatton compiled rounds of 65-64-65 to finish 19 under par and said:

“It was nice to play the last few holes and it not be super-tight.”

It will have come as a surprise to golf fans – as it did to his team captain Rahm – that this was Hatton’s first victory in an individual tournament for three-and-a-half years.

Legion XIII competed strongly throughout the campaign and were second in the season- long team standings. And as Hatton observed, if your team is in contention it adds motivation to each individual to deliver his best form.

Ever since he started playing golf, Tyrrell Hatton has competed with an intensity that has occasionally spilled over into on-course outbursts.

He suggests that playing with his parents in his early years may have given him that aggressive approach. Now in his mid-thirties, he is unlikely to change.

There have been concerns among some observers that the angry episodes might hinder his performances on the course – and in the world rankings. But Hatton has become one of the world’s leading golfers despite his occasional tendency to lose his temper. 

One incident epitomizes Hatton’s ability to maintain his high playing standards even when his blood is up. At the Turkish Open in 2017, he snapped his putter in a moment of anger – then rolled in a 25-yard birdie putt with his wedge. 

Hatton told the LIV Golf podcast Fairway To Heaven in 2024: “I wear my heart on my sleeve, you always know where you stand with me. That’s just how I go about it. There’s times I know I’ve gone a bit too far and been embarrassed, but for the most part I can laugh at it.”

Does he feel the pressure to be different from fans and pundits? He said: “You get a certain amount of negativity. 

“We’re all human. Sometimes you read certain things and it bothers you more than it should. There are some times where I wish I was different in that sense, but I’m just reacting to things. That’s who I am.”

It’s not often that a pro golfer carries his own bag, yet that’s just what Tyrrell Hatton did at The Open Championship in 2024. He hefted his clubs on to his shoulder at the 12th hole, telling his caddie he had hit such a bad tee shot he didn’t deserve to have someone carrying his bag for him!

But what was he actually carrying? What clubs does Hatton use?

For many years, he has played with Ping clubs. When he re-signed with the manufacturer in 2021, its President John K Solheim said: “We appreciated his competitiveness and determination, and we’re proud to be associated with a truly international player who can compete with anyone, anywhere.”

Hatton uses a Ping G430 LST driver, and the brand’s G430 Max fairway woods. His bag also contains Ping i230 and Blueprint S irons, as well as the S159 wedge. His most lofted club is the Titleist Vokey WedgesWorks prototype, while on the greens he uses a Ping Vault Oslo putter. Hatton plays with Titleist Pro V1x balls.

In 2021, Emily Braisher became Tyrrell Hatton’s wife. Raised in Buckinghamshire and a graduate of Nottingham Trent University, she has accompanied Hatton on tour for the last few years.

The couple went viral after an incident during the 2019 Italian Open was captured on video. Hatton’s backswing was interrupted by the noise of a portable toilet door slamming – and it was Emily doing the slamming.

The Hattons live in Marlow in their native Buckinghamshire, though they also have a base in Orlando, Florida. Emily has written a blog, Wife On Tour, chronicling the pair’s travel experience around Hatton’s golf duties.

She caddied for Tyrrell at the Masters par-three contest, just a few months before they were married in North Carolina.

They later revealed that their wedding day did not go smoothly. Tyrrell arrived half an hour late because his driver had not showed up on time, while the happy couple’s plans to take romantic wedding pictures in the Blue Ridge Parkway were wrecked by heavy rain.

Hatton admits he doesn’t do an awful lot in his weeks away from the golf course. He revealed on Fairway To Heaven that before turning pro he worked at The White Company, the luxury clothing and homeware store – and received the worst rating from a mystery shopper that the brand had ever seen!

One bizarre suggestion about Hatton is that he is the younger brother of Ricky Hatton, the British former boxing world champion. That is not true – the two sporting Hattons are not related.

In more than a decade since he turned professional, Tyrrell Hatton has earned nearly $23million in prize money on the DP World Tour and the PGA Tour.

This was augmented in 2024 when he picked up $4million for his victory at the LIV Golf event in Nashville.

Over the years, Hatton’s net worth has also been bolstered by a host of lucrative deals with sponsors. He has been using Ping clubs since 2016, and has a similar long-running deal with adidas for golf apparel and shoes.

Other brands to be associated with Hatton are ISPS Handa, Modest, NetJets, and luxury watchmaker Audemars Piguet.

When he looks back at his golf career so far, Tyrrell Hatton has so much to be proud of already. His first victory on the European Tour came at St Andrews, the historic home of the sport. That win in the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship was followed by another the following year.

And to add to his proud record in the event, Hatton returned in 2024 and became the first man to win the tournament three times. He drained a birdie putt on the last hole to hold off Nicolas Colsaerts, and admitted: “It feels good… and to do it at the home of golf is really special, hard to describe.”

What made it extra special was that he was playing in the team championship at the event alongside Jeff, his father, who first encouraged him to swing a club when he was barely old enough to walk.

Hatton added: “Playing alongside my dad has been awesome. We are pretty fortunate. This is the third time we’ve been able to play this tournament together, and I think finally this year, my dad sort of settled down and he actually played some good golf.”

Of course, the ambitions remain. Hatton still wants a Major championship to his name, and he is clearly keen to enjoy more success for him and for Legion XIII in the LIV Golf Schedule.

The intensity he brings to golf may on occasion lead him to excess – but it also drives him to excel.