The switch that changed the course of Zalatoris’ career

Two weeks after making the switch, Will Zalatoris shot 59.

The change cost his instructor, Troy Denton, a putter but now it has Zalatoris on the verge of a PGA TOUR card.

Zalatoris arrives at this week’s Sanderson Farms Championship as one of the hottest players in the world. He’s finished in the top 20 in 13 consecutive starts, including two straight top-10s on the PGA TOUR. Zalatoris, the leader on the Korn Ferry Tour’s Regular Season Points list, finished eighth in last week’s Corales Puntacana Resort & Club Championship after a T6 showing at the U.S. Open.

“The part that's been so fun about this year is I've … played at that high level in different ways,” Zalatoris said last week. “Some weeks where my ball-striking hasn't been that great, I've saved it with the putter and other weeks I've driven it perfectly and given myself a lot of opportunities to fire at some pins from the fairways.

“I draw a lot of confidence out of what I've done this year mainly just because, like I said, I've done it different ways.”

Zalatoris and his performance coach, Josh Gregory, share a motto: “Just get better today.” Fixing his biggest weakness has allowed Zalatoris, 24, to succeed during this difficult year. Even though he isn’t a PGA TOUR member, Zalatoris has risen more than 600 spots in the world ranking to 70th.

Zalatoris has always been known as an elite ball-striker. It was the stuff of legend around his hometown of Dallas. One observer said that facet of the game has been TOUR-caliber since he was a teenager. When he was 17, he won both the Texas State Amateur and U.S. Junior. Three years ago, he was teammates with Collin Morikawa, Cameron Champ and Scottie Scheffler on the U.S. Walker Cup team.

Zalatoris’ impressive iron play gained notice, but so did his struggles with the putter. Especially on short putts. That's an ailment that usually afflicts players who are past their primes, not young prospects oozing with physical gifts.

He turned pro in the fall of 2017, but started both 2018 and 2019 without even a hint of Korn Ferry Tour status. He used sponsor exemptions to make six PGA TOUR starts in 2018, and even the stats from that small sample showed what the problem was.

He gained 1.1 strokes per round with his approach shots in 2018. That figure would have led the PGA TOUR that season. He missed five of six cuts – and the lone exception was a T68 at Pebble Beach – however.

His precise iron play was outweighed by his poor putting. He lost 1.8 strokes per round on the greens that year. That would have been the worst on TOUR by a stroke per round.

That’s when Denton, the director of instruction at Dallas’ Maridoe Golf Club, gave Zalatoris his arm-lock putter. It was a prototype that had been made for Denton to use in the PGA Professional National Championship.

“I said, ‘There’s just no option anymore,’” Denton said. The arm-lock is the same method that resurrected the career of another Wake Forest alum, Webb Simpson, and turned Bryson DeChambeau into one of the TOUR’s top putters.

If there’s one thing that impresses Denton more than Zalatoris’ ball-striking, however, it’s his zeal for the game. Zalatoris bought in to the change. Breaking 60 so soon confirmed that he was on the right path.

“I immediately knew that if I can roll it that well, I know I can compete against the best in the world and I just need to stay patient,” he said.

After a several months of tinkering with the putter’s weight and loft and finding the right setup, Zalatoris settled on the proper putter configuration.

He needed just eight starts to earn special temporary membership on the Korn Ferry Tour in 2019. This year, he's posted 11 consecutive top-20 finishes. It’s the longest streak in that circuit’s history and still ongoing, though it's uncertain when, or if, he'll need to return to the Korn Ferry Tour.

He needs another 95 non-member FedExCup points to earn special temporary status on the PGA TOUR for this season. Whether through his PGA TOUR starts – he still has seven sponsor exemptions to use, and a spot in the 2021 U.S. Open locked up – or his Korn Ferry Tour success, he’s all but ensured of owning a TOUR card next season.

“He loves to play golf at a level very few people do,” Denton said. “He just needed to find that belief. If he can just be neutral in Strokes Gained with the putter, he’s going to play good because he’s always been a very gifted ball-striker.”

He showed that two weeks ago at Winged Foot, where he finished sixth in the U.S. Open while leading the field in Strokes Gained: Approach (+1.99 per round) and was in the middle of the pack in Strokes Gained: Putting (39th, +0.15 per round). He made a hole-in-one in the first round and was inches from making a second after his tee shot on the 215-yard 13th hole bounced off the flagstick. He closed that opening round by hitting his final two approach shots – from 174 and 134 yards – within 3 feet.

He also gained a career-high 3.1 strokes on the greens in a final-round 71 that moved him up 11 spots on the leaderboard. Only one player, DeChambeau, broke par on that difficult final day at Winged Foot.

Last Sunday, he had to go low to earn another TOUR start. He shot 65 to jump from T45 to T8.

Gregory said they’ve put the majority of weight in Zalatoris’ left side and shortened his backstroke to eliminate as many variables as possible.

“Once you start seeing them go in and doing the same thing day-in and day-out," Gregory said, "you start believing you’re a great putter.”