Medium shots stall this Tour pro. But he is now swearing by 1 workout

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Again!

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Again!

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Winner!

Wow. We apologize that the presentation was a little challenging to navigate, but the mid-range shots – 10 to 25 end – had been just that for Will Zalatoris. He was also frustrated. It wasn’t just that he was missing – it was that he was missing as he often put himself in that range, or rather, as one of the best hitters of the golf ball. Think where Zalatoris would be if he was even a fraction better.

He had taken steps. After the lost time in 2023 due to injury, he returned at the end of that year with a sweeper fieldwhich he believed cleared things from 10 meters up. But the past was a quarrel. Last season on the PGA Tour, he was 166th among players in putts from 20 to 25 feet (8 percent); 170th from 15 to 20 feet (14.29 percent); and 46th from 10 to 15 feet (33.9 percent).

But on Thursday, during the first round match in keeperthe tournament’s season-opening event? He hit 1 with a 20-footer. He birdies 3 with a 24-footer. He birds 6 by 22 feet. He birdied the 7 with a 9-footer. He birds 11 by 17 feet. He finished third in strokes gained: putting.

Kindness. What happened?

A workout was the key.

“Yeah, I think last year if you really think about it,” Zalatoris said, “I wasn’t really playing golf until November after the injury, and I switched to the broomstick and I was still trying to figure out how to learn it that. I’ve had some good weeks, I’ve had some bad weeks, but I’ve had a lot of time – I mean, it’s cleared everything within 10 feet, which was obviously usually my bugaboo, but I felt like I needed to do more 10-to- 25-ft.

“So we did some really tough drills, (coach) Josh Gregory and I, and I wasn’t leaving every day until I got them done, especially from 10 to 25 feet.”

What was the training? We tried to illustrate it in the first paragraphs of this story.

“So 30 putts, five 10-footers, five 12-footers, five 15s, five 17s, five 20s, and I managed to make nine out of 30, and make it until you’re done. So basically, like the drills that we do, you look at the average strokes gained from those distances and then you can try to raise it, maybe try to get to strokes gained plus 1, which makes it much more difficult, especially if you’ are doing it in a green practice that I know.

“Obviously it paid off today. This was really probably the best I’ve putt from 10 to 25 feet probably ever. It’s a good way to start the year.”

Indeed. But apparently it takes time. Scroll back up to see Zalatori’s numbers from the 10- to 25-foot range — and consider that 9 out of 30 is 30 percent. For comparison, here’s a look at how the leaders in those categories fared last year – Max Greyserman made 23 percent of his shots from 20 to 25 feet; Sam Burns made 31.09 percent of his shots from 15 to 20 feet; AND Hayden Springer made 40.52 percent of his shots from 10 to 15 feet.

Of course, Zalatori’s effort came in just one round and 18 holes. But he is encouraged.

“It’s nice to be in a really good place and really good headroom,” Zalatoris said. “The body feels good. They’ve done a lot of great work over the last four months.”

Editor’s note: GOLF.com recently published another article on Zalatoris — titled “Will Zalatoris Gain 19 Pounds in 4 Months. But Not for the Reason You Might Think” — and that article can be found by clicking here or by moving immediately below.

***

Will Zalatoris’ season ended last year in mid-August in Colorado. He stepped off the scale that week at 163 pounds and, at 6-foot-2, was as nervous as ever, fully aware that he was determined to get even leaner. That’s what he was used to, dropping five to 10 pounds during the off-season months into the fall.

It’s just that he didn’t want to lose weight. In fact, he wanted to win weight.

And a lot of it.

“I was tired of people telling me I have a 22-inch waist and all that stuff,” he said Thursday from the Sentry season-opening event in Maui.

But it was about more than just his waistline. Zalatoris had to create a better operating weight for himself to be able to play at a high level, at a high speed, and for three or four weeks straight. The last few years had taught him that he didn’t have the stamina to power through the heat of a PGA Tour season.

“If you look at the weeks I’ve had all year, my best weeks have always been the first and I like to play one, two, three weeks and build into a rhythm,” he said. “And the events that I’ve won as a professional, it’s like in the third or fourth week. And just, in the third or fourth week, I was down a couple miles per hour in swing speed, I wasn’t really feeling too good, I wasn’t driving it well, and it’s just hard to play here like that. I knew I had to get stronger. It wasn’t so much about speed; I know the speed will come. I needed the stability to make sure I was able to do what I’m doing.”

By that he means swinging hard and not hurting himself, which has been an ongoing saga for Zalatoris in recent years. The 28-year-old, who burst onto the scene with six top 10s in his first nine major starts, battled herniated discs late in 2022, eventually pulled out of the 2023 Masters and quickly turned to microdiscectomy surgery. He took months away from the game to heal before returning in late 2023. Last spring he almost had a win at the Genesis Invitational, but it quickly turned into more pain as Zalatoris battled a hip injury all summer .

Which brings us to the end of his season in Colorado, where he decided enough. Zalatoris took up a training program with performance expert Damon Goddard and has spent the past four months bulking up, first mentioning it to reporters during a December appearance in South Africa. When he stepped on the scale in Dallas before heading to this week’s Sentry event, she weighed in at 182 pounds: a 19-pound gain in just four months.

The benefit of the added weight, he said after shooting an eight-under round to start his season, is that he feels he has maintained the carry distances he seeks without going “110 percent” on the ball, putting less stress on him. his body.

“I think the best way to describe how I feel compared to where I was before this weight gain was I thought I was at 100 percent and I still didn’t feel good,” Zalatoris said. “I would have to take a few days off and rest my back, or get a series of treatments. You don’t do that anymore. It’s hard when you limit your practice to go out and play against the best players in the world. So now I think the beauty is I’m trying to do this for longevity, I’m not doing this for distance. If you look at my numbers, they’re all the same, but it feels so much better.”

It has been a long journey towards feeling better for Zalatoris. He admitted Thursday that he feels so good that he didn’t even have surgery. And while it remains to be seen how these changes play out on the leaderboards moving forward, he hasn’t had a cortisone shot — a painkiller he’s relied on in recent years — since August, another sign that quick fixes are hopefully a thing. of the past.

“The ceiling is something I wanted to keep raising,” Zalatoris said, “because I knew if I was sitting at 160 pounds and trying to hit it 300 yards here, that’s not a recipe for longevity.”

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