Check out Will Zalatoris’ huge rise after budding PGA Tour star wins first career win

17 months ago, no one who happened to watch golf knew Will Zalatoris. This past weekend at the FedEx St. Jude, when Zalatoris tried to beat Austria’s Sepp Straka in the first FedEx Cup Playoffs event, it was those same people who asked him final winning the game he played during those 17 months heralded. Such is the life of a budding professional golf star in 2022.

The story of Zalatoris begins long before the Masters 2021, but with the aim of golf as a spectator sport on the biggest stage, that’s where Zalatoris introduces himself to the world. This is a bit of a loss, but he almost won that Masters. Hideki Matsuyama beat him by just one stroke after Zalatoris played the last four holes in the lower 2 innings while Matsuayma played them in 3 more.

So began a year and a half of running close calls. Two more majors top 10 in 2021, followed by two majors runner-ups in 2022 – one of which was in a playoff against Justin Thomas – as well as five top six spots different on the PGA Tour this season. Zalatoris summed it up nicely during his post-tournament press conference in Memphis.

“It’s hard to say ‘about time’ when this is your second year on the Tour, but in terms of time,” said Zalatoris.

Golf is stupid. Performances by Zalatoris St. Jude hasn’t been his best in the last two years. It’s not even close. In terms of strokes, Zalatoris is better at the US Open 2020 in Winged Foot, the aforementioned 2021 Masters, this year’s Masters, this year’s PGA Championship, this year’s US Open, Memorial this June and the Farm Open in January, which he lost in the playoffs to Luke List. So of course he lost all seven of those tournaments and won this one. When the best players say they’ll keep knocking and believe it’s going to go down, that’s more or less what they mean.

“I think any time you put yourself in a position of contention, you learn something about yourself,” he said. “The first second at masters changed my life because it put me in a position to play here as much as i wanted and put me on the map. The second time at the PGA was like an affirmation that it wasn’t a lucky week, and the third time at the US Open gave me more confidence that I could win a Major, I could win it. this. It’s only a matter of time and obviously this is my week. “

Zalatoris has only played 56 PGA Tour tournaments, and he’s now six strokes after five wins, including three major championships. Think about that for a minute. Six hits from five wins covering three majors in his first 56 games starting on the PGA Tour. Fittingly, it’s someone who almost puts those numbers together his 56 for the first time makes me very optimistic about Zalatoris’ career trajectory. Let’s take a blind statistics test to immerse yourself in this point.

Player 1 is Collin Morikawa and Player 2 is Zalatoris. Until you get to the winning and majoring section, they’re almost identical, but we’re not talking about them being in the same stratosphere. Most of this is because we overvalue big wins, especially early in a player’s career. Part of that is because we underestimated the games we didn’t win, of which Zalatoris had a lot. However, all of that implies that we should probably talk about them – at least in terms of what they achieve from this point on – more synonymously.

When Zalatoris dumped 10-foot on Sunday’s 72nd hole who could help him win the golf tournament, he turned to someone behind, perhaps his caddy, and shouted, ” What will they say now?!” It’s clearly an exclamation about the present moment (which you’ve always loved to watch), but it underscores a bit of confusion about Zalatoris being a player.

While it’s true that his swing in short putts looks like his elbow is being impacted, his hitting performance is overall solid, if not above average. jar. This season, he’s hit aggressive shots, which, when you hit the ball into golf like Zalatoris, is good enough to win multiple times a year. He’s also one of the best latencies on the PGA Tour (he’s currently 3rd in approach putt performance). However, since strokes sometimes look so grotesque, perhaps casual fans or even some of the media have developed a story about Zalatoris that isn’t actually true, and some of that may be true. possibility is what he responded to. Again, all of this just makes me more excited about where he’s headed.

Joseph LaManga posed a question during the final round of the FedEx St. Jude on Sunday fascinates me. If you had to choose a player’s career earnings starting January 1, 2023, who would you choose? Age rules out the likes of Rory McIlroy and perhaps Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas as well. We assume that earnings from LIV Golf do not count, so this amount does not include Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka.

You want a young star capable of capitalizing on the cash flow that the PGA Tour seems likely to come in the next two decades. Your real contenders are probably Scottie Scheffler, Viktor Hovland, Sam Burns, Jon Rahm, Morikawa and Zalatoris.

At first, I dismissed Zalatoris, but the more I think about it, the more I believe it might be the right answer. At least it’s not clear that you would choose Scheffler or Hovland or Morikawa or Rahm over Zalatoris which is an astonishing thing to say about someone who didn’t have a PGA Tour win 24 hours ago. And while it comes down to getting Zalatoris, with anything worthwhile at stake, I’m still not sure I would. However, the part that cares about the rest of the world in the next 10 or 15 years is that I’m not sure I’ll do either.

Rick Gehman and Kyle Porter recap the 2022 FedEx St Jude Championship. Watch and listen to The First Cut on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.