CHASKA, MINN. — As professional golfers age, they often talk about trying to play like a kid again—with complete freedom. Step up, see shot, hit shot. Get the ball in the hole regardless of how it looks. Forget about the technical jargon and just play golf.
Garrett Engle isn’t a pro just yet. But there might be no elite golfer who embodies this better than the 21-year-old from Harrisburg, Pa., who advanced to the Round of 32 at the U.S. Amateur on Wednesday in historic fashion, taking 25 holes to defeat U.S. National Junior Team member Henry Guan. The match, which went to seven extra holes at Hazeltine National is tied for the third longest in U.S. Amateur history and the longest since 1998.
A rising college senior at Chattanooga, Engle plays faster than a golfer chasing sunset and uses a full-swing grip that his fellow competitors can hardly believe. “Wow,” mouthed one fellow competitor, seemingly in disbelief as he watched Engle tee off in the playoff.
Engle uses a split grip, where his left hand is on the traditional butt end of the club and his right is toward the bottom of the grip. The only connection between his two hands is a fully extended left index finger. It’s part baseball grip, part hockey slap shot, and on first glance, it just looks like some sort of practice drill.
That’s how it’s always been for Engle, who says his parents played very little golf.
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“I started with just a normal baseball grip,” Engle said. “When I was 4 years old, they were like, you should try to interlock. But my hands weren't big enough to hold the club with an interlock grip, so I started interlocking but my hands were super far apart. And I’ve never changed since.”
Engle played basketball and baseball growing up, which helped foster the athletic mindset he brings to golf. He got into the game after playing mini-golf with his parents and spotting the driving range attached to the mini-golf course.
“I'd beg my parents saying, ‘I want to go do what the adults are,’” Engle said. “They said, ‘We’ll let you go out to the range and hit a couple balls with plastic clubs,’ and I got into it from there. I literally begged them to go to the range every day, apparently, and that's how it all started.”
Engle says his game—and grip—are almost entirely self-made, save for a rare visit to a coach if his swing really starts to get off. He was among the top-ranked recruits in his high school class of 2021 and began his college career Oklahoma before transferring to Chattanooga after one season.
In recent months, Engle has found excellent form. In June, he shot rounds of 67-67-66-66 to finish at 22 under and win the Dogwood Invitational, one of the country’s top amateur events. The final round was punctuated by an albatross on the par-5 seventh hole.
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The unique grip, he says, gives him excellent club face awareness, which is why he’s never changed it. “It just feels right. It just feels like I have so much control over where it's going with my hands,” said Engle, who also finished runner-up at last month’s Porter Cup. “I can feel exactly where the club face is at all times.”
As you might expect, the grip garners plenty of attention, including from his college teammates. “All my teammates just say ‘I didn't know we had a baseball team.’ Because we don't have a baseball team. I think it’s hilarious,” he said.
None of those jokes ever cause Engle to second-guess his connection to the club, even if he has played around with a standard grip for fun. “I’ve tried it for fun, and I can do it,” said Engle, who is ranked No. 553 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking. “I actually hit it a little bit farther with a normal grip, but I hit these gross snap hooks, which I’m doing this week anyway.”
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In Wednesday’s Round of 64 match, Engle had an occasional left miss off the tee, including on the 18th hole, when the match was tied. Finding the left fairway bunker, Engle miraculously advanced it over the towering lip and tree between he and the hole, eventually settling long of the green in the back bunker, short-sided to a steeply sloped green. After Guan knocked it to 15 feet for birdie, Engle made what he said was “the best up and down of my life” to save par, which was enough to advance the match to extra holes after Guan missed.
It was a display of short-game brilliance that Engle, who plays his second-round match at 8:20 a.m. local time Thursday morning, with the third slated for the afternoon., routinely relies on. “Short game recovery is definitely the strength of my game,” he said. But he wasn’t done. On the sixth playoff hole, he was in another greenside bunker, which he said was “dead.” “I didn’t think I was going to be able to stop it without it going in the water,” he said. His bunker shot hit the hole, setting up a par save that was enough to push the match to the par-5 seventh, which he won with a par.
“The win at Dogwood gave me a lot of confidence and belief again that I could do this,” Engle said. Since then it's been the same thing, just will the ball in the hole. That’s been the theme of the summer.”