CHASKA, Minn. – Move over Ed Fiori.
A new “The Grip” is taking hold in golf, and his name is Garrett Engle, a Chattanooga senior who played 25 holes — the longest match of Wednesday’s round of 64 at the 124th U.S. Amateur — before surpassing high school senior Henry Guan.
When you hear Mocs head coach Blaine Woodruff describe Engle’s grip, “It’s pretty strong, basically a split grip, but he doesn’t really connect his right pinky and left index finger. He’s got a lot of control of the face and the face doesn’t really open up very far. It stays pretty square through the swing and that takes a long time.”
Woodruff and Engle’s teammates have all tried to imitate what Engle does, but without much success.
“It’s hard to hit a golf ball that way without hitting it straight left,” Woodruff adds.
But Engle has made it work his whole life. He first picked up a golf club, for example. And while some instructors over the years have offered to help him change it, and a few college coaches have asked him to throw it away before he gets an offer, Engle has stayed true to his roots.
When he signed with the University of Oklahoma, Engle was the highest-ranked junior from Pennsylvania and widely considered one of the top 15 recruits in the country. But he broke his left collarbone before his freshman year, lost his game and his confidence, and failed to strike out for the Sooners.
“I’m a very creative golfer, and I’ve lost that a little bit,” Engle said.
Engle joined the Portal after his freshman season. When Engle visited Chattanooga that summer, Woodruff, who had just gotten the job after previously serving as an assistant at Pepperdine, knew right away that he wanted Engle on his team.
“What I liked about him was that he was different,” Woodruff said, “but he also knew who he was and was comfortable with it and believed in it.”
Engle added: “It was nice to see that he believed in me.”
While Engle flexed his creative muscles and helped the Mocs to a surprise appearance at the 2023 NCAA Championship, he took a step back as a junior. He beat just 12 players at last year’s U.S. Amateur at Cherry Hills, and those struggles carried into the fall, where he made three starts, failed to crack the top 25 in any of those events and finished outside the top 50 twice. He was in and out of the starting lineup last spring, though he showed some signs of a turnaround at the Western Intercollegiate, where he placed ninth.
The real shift came earlier this summer at the Dogwood Invitational, when Engle won. A few events later, he was second at the Porter Cup.
Two huge confidence boosters.
“I’ve proven to myself a lot at Dogwood that I can do this,” Engle said. “Now I just want to prove to everybody that I can do this at this stage.”
Engle had a pair of 1-under rounds in stroke play, one Monday at Chaska Town Course and the other Tuesday at Hazeltine, where he doubled a par-5 but also made an eagle. Against Guan, Engle had just two pars in the first 11 holes, but he led by as much as 2-up and was 1-up at the turn.
Engle showed his creative side on the par-4 10th hole, where he hit his second shot through an 18-inch hole in the trees, over some water and with OB lurking, to make a bogey that tied the hole.
A double from Engle on the par-4 16th hole saw Guan level the score, and the score would remain that way for a few more tense hours.
Guan went up and down on the first extra hole, hitting a 40-yard wedge shot a few feet back and earning a conceded par. That forced Engle to score from 7 feet, which he did.
On the fifth hole, Engle had Guan on the ropes, but he missed a short par.
Then, on the sixth, Engle, irritated by what had just happened, missed a drive to the right and was lucky to hit his second shot into a greenside bunker. What he had to do next was a downhill shot, short-sided and with water staring at him from the other side of the green; it was a shot that Engle, with his closed face, could not have hit a few years ago.
“It’s not necessarily the grip, it’s just hard to get the club to sit properly and open up,” Engle explained. “Once I was able to convince myself that you can lay it flat, I’ve done a lot better over the last year and unlocked my ability to hit shots, especially when I’m under pressure.”
Engle hit the shot perfectly, and the ball hit a chunk of the hole. Engle called it the shot of the day because Guan followed up with a 15-foot par putt to stay alive.
Ultimately, though, Guan made a fatal error on the par-5 seventh, chipping through the green and into a bunker, allowing Engle to play a conservative 10-foot chip and leave his birdie putt close to seal the win. He now plays Arizona’s Zach Pollo on Thursday morning.
“After hole one I thought, ‘This is probably going to go a long way,'” Engle said. “So I’m just going to stay sane and keep fighting.”
And hold on tight.
