Robert MacIntyre is attempting to become the first winner of a PGA Tour event with his father on his bag since Heath Slocum won the 2005 Sanderson Farms Championship with father Jack toting for him. MacIntyre’s dad, Dougie, provided the pep talk his son needed after making consecutive bogeys at Nos. 8 and 9.
“He was having a wee go at me when I was walking from the 10th tee down to the fairway. Look, he was a sporting guy, he knows how to win, knows how to lose, he’s been through it all. He could see my head going a little bit and he’s like, What have you been working on for the last eight weeks, 10 weeks, whatever I’ve been doing, when I realized what was the problem. I kind of flipped into that mode and tried to find the positive in everything,” MacIntyre said.
He said it was just what he needed to kick him into shape. The turning point for the Scot happened one hole later at the 11th hole after he hit a drive into the fairway and it rolled into a seeded divot.
“Instead of moaning and mumping about it, I was like, you know what, this seeded divot allowed me to hit a 6-iron, a cutty 6, and I’m going, if that wasn’t in an a seeded divot I wasn’t going to hit that shot. So I tried to flip the negatives into positives,” he explained. “Just started to find momentum. I holed a putt, holed a long putt, and then it just, when it gets rolling it’s nice.”
Asked what he learned from competing in the Ryder Cup in Rome that can help him in Sunday’s final round, MacIntyre said, “Quite a lot. There’s a couple of things that people have told me, obviously my playing partner Justin Rose, who is, that man’s done it all in the game of golf, and so much respect for him, especially being a partner and being side by side fighting for the same cause. He’s given me something that I’ll never forget, and tomorrow I’m going to try and implement it and play my best and the outcome will be the outcome.”
“You’re not going to tell me what that is, are you?” a reporter asked.
“No,” MacIntyre said with a smile.
For more on MacIntyre’s story, see 5 things to know about Bobby Mac.