CHASKA, Minn. – Move over Ed Fiori.
A new “The Grip” is taking hold in golf, and his name is Garrett Engle, a rising senior at Chattanooga who played 25 holes – the longest match of Wednesday’s Round of 64 at the 124th U.S. Amateur – before getting past high-schooler Henry Guan.
To hear Mocs head coach Blaine Woodruff describe Engle’s grip: “It’s pretty strong, basically split grip, but he just barely connects his right pinky and left index finger. He’s got a lot of control over the face, and the face doesn’t really open a whole lot. It stays pretty square through the hit for a long time.”
Woodruff and Engle’s teammates have all attempted to replicate what Engle does but to little success.
“It’s hard to hit a golf ball that way and not hit it straight left,” Woodruff adds.
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But Engle has made it work his whole life. It’s how he first picked up a golf club. And while some instructors over the years offered to help him change it and a few college coaches asked him to ditch it before an extending offer, Engle stayed true to his roots.
When he signed with the University of Oklahoma, Engle was Pennsylvania’s top-ranked junior and widely considered a top-15 recruit nationally. But he broke his left collarbone before his freshman year, lost his game and his confidence, and didn’t hit a shot for the Sooners.
“I’m a very creative golfer, and I kind of lost some of that,” Engle said.
Engle entered the portal after his first season. On Engle’s visit to Chattanooga that summer, Woodruff, who had just gotten the job after previously serving as the assistant for Pepperdine, knew immediately that he wanted Engle on his team.
“What I loved about him was that he was different,” Woodruff said, “but he also knew who he was and was OK with that and believed in that.”
Added Engle: “It was nice to see that he believed in me.”
While Engle unlocked his creativity 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 bled into the fall, where he logged three starts, not cracking the top 25 in any of them and placing outside the top 50 twice. He was in and out of the starting lineup last spring, though he did show some signs of a turnaround at the Western Intercollegiate, where he tied for ninth.
The real shift came earlier this summer at the Dogwood Invitational; Engle won. A few events later, he finished runner-up at the Porter Cup.
Two huge confidence boosters.
“I proved a lot to myself at Dogwood that I can do this,” Engle said. “Now I kind of want to prove to everybody that I can do this at this stage.”
Engle posted a couple 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 carded just two pars through the first 11 holes, yet he led by as much as 2 up and was 1 up at the turn.
Engle showed off his creative side on the par-4 10th hole, where he threaded his second shot through a 1 ½-foot gap in the trees, over some water and with OB lurking, to set up a hole-tying bogey.
A double by Engle at the par-4 16th hole allowed Guan to even things up, and the score would stay that way for an exciting couple more hours.
Guan got up and down on the first extra hole, ripping a 40-yard wedge shot back a few feet and earning a conceded par. That forced Engle to make from 7 feet, which he did.
At the fifth, Engle had Guan on the ropes, only to whiff a shortie for par.
Then at the sixth, Engle, miffed about what had just happened, missed a drive way right and was lucky to get his second shot into a greenside bunker. What he faced next was a downhill shot, short-side and with water staring at him from across the green; it was a shot that Engle, with his closed face, wouldn’t have been able to hit a couple years ago.
“It’s not necessarily because of the grip, but it’s just difficult to get the club to sit right for it to open,” Engle explained. “Once I was able to kind of convince myself that you can lay it flat, I’ve done a lot better with it the last year, and I’ve kind of unlocked the ability to hit shots, especially when I’m under pressure.”
Engle clipped the shot perfectly, and the ball caught a piece of the hole. Engle called it the shot of the day because Guan followed by sinking a 15-foot par putt to stay alive.
Finally, though, at the par-5 seventh, Guan made a fatal mistake, chipping through the green and into a bunker, leaving Engle with the ability to play a conservative chip from 10 feet and lag his birdie putt close to seal the win. He’ll now play Arizona’s Zach Pollo on Thursday morning.
“After hole 1, I was like, this is probably going to go a long way,” Engle said. “So just keep my wits about me and keep fighting.”
And hold on strong.