NASSAU, Bahamas — He walked off the 18th green toward the scoreboard with a big ol’ black 9 next to his name and just apologized. “I’m sorry you had to watch such bad golf today,” Will Zalatoris joked to the volunteers as he gave them the customary autographed ball.
Thursday was supposed to be his day, his return to golf seven months after a back injury forced Zalatoris to withdraw before the Masters and undergo microdiscectomy surgery to repair the issues that plagued him for years. He would debut his new broomstick putter and show the world that one of the most exciting young stars in golf was back.
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Instead, there was that black 9, a brutal first-round 81 at the Hero World Challenge thanks to a poor putting performance — losing 5.89 strokes on the green (a Shotlink number he actually says is wrong!) with that new putter. But who cares? Really, who cares? Zalatoris truly laughed all of it off, repeating, “I had no expectations coming in.” That was the entire point of choosing this event, a relaxed 20-man field in front of maybe a few hundred wealthy spectators in the Bahamas.
“This week is a lot of R&D,” Zalatoris said.
What matters is that Zalatoris was here, and it doesn’t hurt that he bounced back with a 68 on Friday while leading the field in putting. But what really matters is the past year to get here.
“Yeah, it’s been …,” he began his news conference Tuesday before trailing off. “It’s been an interesting seven months.”
Because Zalatoris was about to become one of the dudes. He was something of a unicorn, so thin but with ridiculous swing speed, long drives and filthy iron play. It all added up to finishing top 10 in his first three majors as a PGA Tour player, including a second-place finish at the 2021 Masters. Then in 2022, he went T6, 2 and T2 at the first three majors, losing the PGA Championship to Justin Thomas in a three-hole playoff and playing in the final group at the U.S. Open with Matt Fitzpatrick. It was almost comical, a then-26-year-old star who still hadn’t won a PGA Tour event but had six top-10 major finishes. That’s as many as Patrick Cantlay and Viktor Hovland combined, to date.
Great to see from Willy Z. 🙌
Will Zalatoris drains the birdie putt from 33 feet out on 17!
📺: Golf Channel & @peacock | #HeroWorldChallenge pic.twitter.com/4WhX6imjnV
— Golf Channel (@GolfChannel) December 1, 2023
So when Zalatoris finally won the 2022 Memphis St. Jude Invitational in a thrilling playoff, he almost came to tears. All this excitement and promise was finally coming together.
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“Yeah, it’s kind of hard to say ‘about time’ when it’s your second year on tour,” Zalatoris said that day, “but about time.”
One week later, his back went out. He had to withdraw from the BMW Championship in the third round, but he and his surgeon decided not to do surgery. He withdrew from the Presidents Cup and worked his way back with an underwhelming ramp-up to the Masters as he tried to tinker with his swing mechanics. Then, 30 minutes before his Masters tee time, it went out again. “Kind of a golfer’s worse nightmare.” He left Augusta, and his 2023 season was over.
It leaves Zalatoris in golf purgatory, waiting to see if this will be just one hiccup or the kind of moment that stunts a career. He is simultaneously someone who can be one of the PGA Tour’s biggest stars and someone who just turned 27 with one win on tour. No longer young, the 2023 season should have been his year. He would have been a shoo-in for the Ryder Cup. Instead, it was all on hold.
“I had been on kind of cruise control for two years of just this steady progression, being in contention at majors, I think not really giving myself the time to fully kind of appreciate kind of where I was physically,” Zalatoris said.
The hardest part was patience. He never knew when he’d be able to come back. He couldn’t pick up his dogs, and little events like walking down the stairs were big moments.
But it also meant time Zalatoris normally doesn’t get. He and his wife, Caitlin, could make bucket list trips like going to Wimbledon. “I was able to kind of just live life,” he said. He returned to school, doing some Wake Forest elective classes he never finished. “I’m 27 and I’m writing my resume for work and made a LinkedIn account and whatnot.”
All of these things are little examples of why there can be optimism Zalatoris can succeed in this comeback. On the surface, he looks like the Dallas country club kid he is, the son of a shopping mall developer. But then he begins to talk, and you realize he’s a nerd. He’s cool and self-deprecating and gets obsessed with figuring out why things are the way they are. So when he talks about all the struggles of the past year, he tries to reframe it.
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“I feel like I know myself better physically, know myself better mentally,” he said. “So I think there’s going to be a lot of positives that are going to come from this time off. It’s not like I just sat around and didn’t even watch golf or think about golf. I was watching guys every day, seeing how some of my buddies were playing. So my mind was always there, but when you’re not able to have a club in your hand …”
He started hitting balls without restrictions only six weeks ago. His surgeon wanted him to return a week ago at the RSM Classic, but Zalatoris and his team decided on the Bahamas in part because there wouldn’t be pressure at the start of the tour’s silly season. During his morning range sessions, he could be heard debating college football or talking about baseball with his caddie and coach.
Will Zalatoris made a putter change during his injury rehab, switching to a broomstick putter. (Mike Ehrmann / Getty Images)The key to all of this to work, though, is trying to reduce the stress on his back without losing his explosiveness. He had this winding, athletic “backwards C” type swing.
“I’ve always been a very hyperdynamic — my left foot’s off the ground like (Justin Thomas),” Zalatoris said. “Well, the reality is that actually put a lot of stress on my back, and I had a bunch of side bend and maybe my posture wasn’t perfect.”
So he and coach Troy Denton worked on leveling out that swing, making it more rotational and horizontal. A big focus is keeping his left heel on the ground, which comes with give and take. It takes stress off his back, but he might lose some power. It also adds accuracy. Zalatoris always gained more than 11 strokes off the tee in distance, but he lost strokes in accuracy. He said he’s still getting up as high as 178 mph ball speed sometimes (he was generally in the 180s before the injury) while hitting more fairways (he’s hit 50 percent through two rounds in Nassau).
So when Zalatoris shot an 81 Thursday, he was frustrated, but he was not upset. He is working on a new swing and an entirely new putting style simultaneously, while managing his back. “It’s just mental rust,” he said. Also, he laughed at the 5.89 strokes lost putting, saying he thinks the Shotlink was way off. He said he had putts miss by 6 inches but Shotlink said they missed by 11 feet.
By Friday, he looked far sharper, sinking difficult eagle and birdie putts, including a 33-foot birdie on No. 17. His 68 included seven birdies or eagles, with most of his bogeys coming via wild drives on this sandy course. Zalatoris was notorious for his struggles on the greens pre-injury and is now using the broomstick putter popularized by Lucas Glover this summer. “I’m still learning how to use that thing, but I think the last 12 holes it was really good.”
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“I know really, really good golf is ahead,” he said. “It’s just getting the reps in.”
His goal from here on out is just to get back to par, making positive steps toward playing that good golf. These are all just little moments toward trying to make that leap in 2024, to get out of that purgatory and take his place again as one of the best golfers in the world. Nobody has ever denied he can be as good as anyone. This is just the fork in the road in his career.
So as he finished up his round, signed his scorecard and went to greet Caitlin, he hugged her and smiled.
“Little easier today, huh?”
(Top photo: Mike Ehrmann / Getty Images)
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