Tyrrell Hatton won the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship at St Andrews on Sunday.
Robert Perry/PA Wire via Getty Images
The big news from last week’s Alfred Dunhill Links Championship was that PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan, PIF President Yasir Al-Rumayyan and Rory Rory McIlroy all performed well and played golf together. But Sunday at St. Andrews also saw some other big news: one of the most important non-major wins for a LIV Golf pro.
Tyrrell Hatton shot a final-round 70 on the Old Course at St Andrews to win the Alfred Dunhill Links title for the third time, but most importantly, it was Won the championship for the first time as a LIV Golf member.
Hatton competed in the PGA Tour's 2024 season at the Sentinel Field in Hawaii and the Sony Open in January. But on January 31, LIV Golf announced that the British veteran was one of four pros joining an upstart league funded by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund.
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Since LIV golf events do not award official World Golf Ranking points, Hatton's ranking has plummeted since that fateful day. When he left the PGA Tour to join LIV, he was ranked No. 15 in the world, just a few spots away from his peak of No. 12.
By the time he played in the first round at the Alfred Dunhill Links last Thursday, he had fallen to 38th.
But at Dunhill Links, the annual pro-am tournament held at the Old Course at St. Andrews, Carnoustie and Kingsbarns, the courses are no joke. In fact, this is one of the strongest non-main events on the DP World Tour all year. In addition to Hatton, world No. 3 Rory McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood, Sean Lowry, Billy Horschel and Robert McIntyre, as well as LIV star Jon · Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Patrick Reed and Louis Oosthuizen also participated.
With this victory, Hatton made a huge leap in the world rankings, rising all the way to No. 20, making up for almost all the positions he lost in the 2024 LIV competition. One of the reasons this is important is that qualification for all four major championships is based on the OWGR ranking.
The Masters and Open accept the top 50 players in the OWGR, the U.S. Open excludes the top 60, and the PGA Championship often offers special invitations to anyone within the top 100.
Hatton qualified for the Masters by finishing tied for ninth at Augusta National in 2024. But to advance through the world rankings into the British Open and U.S. Open, he must remain within the top 60 and top 50 respectively. Deadline for next year's competition.
That's made much easier now as he jumped to 20th at the Old Course last weekend.
Another big concern for Hatton at Dunhill Links is making the European Ryder Cup team. Automatic qualifying for European teams is determined by a points system based primarily on DP World Tour performance and world rankings.
With this win, Hatton moves up to fifth in the European Ryder Cup standings. This also earned him qualifications for the upcoming Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship and DP World Tour Championship in November.
As Hatton pointed out after Sunday's win, these starts will provide Hatton with two more opportunities to improve his ranking in the OWGR and European Ryder Cup standings.
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“It feels great. My last win was at the DP World Tour in Abu Dhabi '21. That was a long time ago. I knew when I came back last week for the British Masters and At the Spanish Open, I really wanted to get enough points to be able to go to Abu Dhabi and Dubai from a world ranking points perspective, a Ryder Cup points perspective,” Hatton said. “I've been lucky enough to compete in the DP World Tour Championship every year since I've had a Tour card. Today's win secures my spot there. I'm excited to compete in both events at the end of the year.”
What made the achievement even more special was that Hatton was competing alongside his father in the Dunhill Links, which ended up being the first championship victory his father had ever witnessed.
“This is our third time playing this tournament together and I think this year my dad has finally settled down and he's actually played some good golf. He was unreal yesterday which was great to see,” Hatton said Sunday. “I know it would be even more special if we could win the team event, but at the end of the day these are memories that none of us will ever forget, and for me to win the individual event today, it was the first time I won a tournament with my dad, which made it even more special, and it was so cool to have him in the front row.”
