Akshay Bhatia didn’t know who Sauce Gardner was, but that didn’t stop him from providing some free instruction for the New York Jets cornerback.
Bhatia, who shot a bogey-free 8-under 64 to grab the first-round lead at the Rocket Mortgage Classic, was asked if he knew who the shut-down corner out of Cincinnati was during his post-round press conference.
“Sorry, who?” Bhatia said.
“Sauce Gardner,” the interviewer repeated.
“I don’t,” he said.
Gardner, 23, recently took up golf and has been posting videos on social media. Bryson DeChambeau replied to one of them and offered to give him a lesson on his YouTube channel. But Gardner, who also got some help from the PGA of America, got some free analysis from Bhatia when the interviewer asked him to look at one of Gardner’s videos – presumably on his phone.
“On his short game, he’s using a lot of lower body, which you don’t really want to do, so that was first off,” Bhatia said. “Other than that, it looks pretty good. He’ll just get used to kind of releasing the golf club. Looks like he kind of holds on a little bit. He’s got some work to do, but off to a good start.”
Rickie Fowler echoed that sentiment.
“I like the possibilities. There’s a lot of good athletic moves and speed in there. A little work, watch out,” Fowler said.
Asked for a tip, Fowler said, “Keep swinging hard and then a big thing is work on short game and putting. For a lot of people, I feel like high handicappers, I feel like that’s kind of the easiest way to start taking strokes off. Then you can worry about the long game later.”
Will Zalatoris also had nothing but encouraging words for Gardner.
“I mean, he’s got some speed, for one,” Zalatoris said. “The dude’s an athlete, we know that, but that’s pretty impressive. Clean up a little bit of the short game there and he’s going to be pretty good pretty quick. All those football guys are freak athletes. I played with Calvin Johnson and Aidan Hutchinson on the 313 on Tuesday and those guys were silly good around the greens. That’s pretty impressive.”
There you have it. Follow the advice of the firm of Fowler, Bhatia & Zalatoris and Gardner’s pitch shots should have a little Tour sauce.
