Akshay Bhatia had every reason to believe that the 2025 PGA Tour season would serve as yet another step in his strong and popular rise. Over the previous two years, the lanky North Carolinian, who skipped college and turned pro at the age of 17, has grown into a much-respected competitor. Bhatia won once in each of the last two years, and a pair of goals seemed lofty but realistic: making noise in major championships and getting the attention of U.S. Ryder Cup captain Keegan Bradley for Bethpage Black.<\/p>\n
MORE: Ranking the pros\u2019 cameo performances in \u2018Happy Gilmore 2\u2019<\/p>\n
To Bhatia\u2019s enormous disappointment, neither has happened, though he\u2019s still facing huge stakesnto next week\u2019s regular season finale and the FedEx Playoffs that follow.<\/p>\n
Battling to improve his spot at No. 46 in the FedEx Cup standings\u2014the top 50 will make the playoffs\u2019 second event\u2014Bhatia chipped in twice and fired a nine-under-par 63 in the 3M Championship on Saturday to hold the co-lead at 18 under with Denmark\u2019s Thorbjorn Olesen (67). Four players are tied for third, one shot back, including Kurt Kitayama, who shot 28 on the front nine at TPC Twin Cities in Blaine, Minn., and threatened 59 before shooting 60.<\/p>\n
It probably says something about how far Bhatia has come that he\u2019s been so frustrated with his play and how he didn\u2019t handle the pressure he put on himself. He scuffed around in most of the biggest events, with two missed cuts in the majors and a best finish of T-30 in last week\u2019s Open Championship. The highlight was charging to an 11-under start heading into the weekend of the Players Championship, only to shoot 75-70 to tie for third.<\/p>\n
Since Sawgrass, Bhatia has only one top-20 result in his last 12 starts.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I definitely feel like it\u2019s been a demoralizing season for most of the year,\u201d Bhatia said. \u201cObviously, Players was my best finish and felt like I had a good chance to win there. And then after that it\u2019s just been a decline.<\/p>\n
\u201cStruggled with my driver for a little bit, didn\u2019t play great in the majors, just too much pressure on myself trying to make Ryder Cup, trying to win, trying to contend in majors. I\u2019ve just compartmentalized at this point where if I don\u2019t make [FedEx Cup] top 50, it\u2019s OK, and at least I have my job next year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bhatia, who toiled in golf\u2019s developmental circuits initially for several years, called his \u201ctoughest year\u201d in the big leagues. \u201cI feel like every year has been an incline and this year has felt like a decline most of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bhatia could put himself in a completely different frame of mind with a win in Minnesota that would vault him into the top 20 in the FedEx Cup\u2014a strong position for making the top 30 who reach the Tour Championship.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m coming here knowing that if I can get to a certain number, then it will be really great,\u201d Bhatia said. \u201cBut at the same time \u2026 it\u2019s not so much pressure to where I feel like I\u2019m coming here to win; it\u2019s more so, \u2018OK, I need to have a solid enough finish to get in a better position.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, winning out here is very tough, there\u2019s so many guys within how many shots of the lead, so it would mean a lot. But again, I\u2019m just trying to play solid golf and hopefully the cards fall my way tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Akshay Bhatia had every reason to believe that the 2025 PGA Tour season would serve as yet another…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24954,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-24953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}