Will Zalatoris gained 19 pounds. But not for the reason you might think

Will Zalatoris’ 2024 season ended in Colorado in mid-August. 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. It was 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, the third or fourth week I was down a couple of 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 out 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 a herniated disc late in 2022, eventually pulling out of the 2023 Masters and soon resorting to microdiscectomy surgery. He took months away from the game to heal before returning in early 2024. That spring nearly featured a win at the Genesis Invitational, but quickly turned to more pain as Zalatoris struggled a hamstring injury all summer.

Which brings us to the end of his season in Colorado, when he decided enough was enough. Zalatoris took up a training program with performance expert Damon Goddard and has spent the last four months bulking up, mentioning it to reporters first during an appearance in South Africa in December. 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.”