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Chris Gotterup Is Suddenly in Scottie and Rory Territory
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Chris Gotterup Is Suddenly in Scottie and Rory Territory Go to https://kachava.com and use code WINGO for 15% off your first order. Chris Gotterup just won again. And the list he is now on is almost hard to believe. Since mid-May of 2024, the players with the most wins on the PGA Tour are Scottie Scheffler with ten, Rory McIlroy with five, and Chris Gotterup with five. That is the conversation now. Not whether Gotterup can have a nice career. Not whether he can occasionally pop up on the leaderboard. Whether he has become one of the most dangerous American players in golf. And after another final-round charge at the John Deere, Trey Wingo and Justin Ray are starting to look at Gotterup differently. The List That Changes the Conversation Justin puts the number in perspective right away. One year ago, Gotterup was heading into the Scottish Open as a one-time PGA Tour winner. Now he has five PGA Tour wins. The company matters. Scottie. Rory. Gotterup. That does not mean he is Scottie Scheffler or Rory McIlroy. It does mean the résumé is changing quickly. And the way he is winning might be even more impressive than the total itself. There have been four times this season where a player has won on the PGA Tour with a final round of 64 or lower. Three of them belong to Chris Gotterup. The other was Wyndham Clark shooting 60 in Dallas. Justin could not find another modern-era example of a player winning three PGA Tour events in one season with a final round of 64 or lower. That is not normal Sunday golf. That is a player who can go nuclear when the tournament is there to be taken. Why Gotterup’s Ceiling Looks Different Now The obvious part of Gotterup’s game is the power. He is excellent off the tee and that has always been the starting point of the conversation. But Justin points out the part that makes the ceiling feel real — he is also a top-30 putter this season in strokes gained. That combination is why this is no longer just a “hot player” conversation. He has won on different kinds of golf courses, in different environments, with different asks. The Scottish Open is not Phoenix. Phoenix is not the John Deere. That matters. He is not proving he can only win one specific type of event. Trey asks the bigger question: is this a guy you now have to think about as a major championship factor for the next decade? Justin’s answer is pretty clear. He would be surprised if Gotterup does not pick off a major in the next few years. He already had a strong Open Championship last year. He now returns to the Scottish Open as a defending champion. And if this version of Gotterup shows up overseas, he is going to be a problem. The PGA Tour’s New Gotterup Problem The conversation gets more complicated when Trey brings up the PGA Tour’s new two-track future — the working-title Championship Series and Challenger Series. Gotterup just won the John Deere. The event clearly matters to him. But if the John Deere eventually becomes part of the Challenger side of the new structure, what happens if Gotterup is a Championship Series player and still wants to go back? What happens if Scottie Scheffler wants to play the Byron Nelson? Or Colonial? What happens when the biggest names in the sport want to support events that mean something to them, but their presence takes a spot from a player trying to earn his way up? That is the issue Trey had not fully considered until a friend brought it up. If a top player drops down for one week and takes a spot, and someone else misses a chance to move into the Championship Series because of it, that becomes a real problem. Justin thinks there will have to be some kind of middle ground. Maybe a once-a-year exemption. Maybe a past champion rule. Maybe a compensatory points system. Nobody has the exact answer yet. But this is the kind of detail that will decide whether the new structure works. Rigid in the vision. Flexible in the details. This is one of the details. Max Homa and Lucas Glover Deserve a Mention The John Deere also gave Trey and Justin two other stories worth noting. Lucas Glover nearly won again in his mid-40s and led the field tee to green. Trey has said it before and says it again here — years from now, Lucas Glover as PGA Tour commissioner would not shock him. The way he thinks about the game, the way he talks about structure, and the way he carries himself all point in that direction. Then there is Max Homa, who finally looked more like Max Homa again. Justin noticed it on the back nine Sunday. The walk. The expression. The look of a player who believed he was going to make the next one. For a guy who has been grinding through a difficult stretch, that is not a small thing. Trey puts it simply: it looked like Max was playing golf again, not playing golf swing. The Morikawa Reminder Colin Morikawa also enters the conversation after Trey sat down with him at the Travelers. The line that stuck: until you win all of them. That is the goal stated without fully stating the goal. Justin brings the numbers behind why Morikawa can talk that way. He leads the PGA Tour in strokes gained approach this season. A few years ago, he led the tour in average proximity from 125 to 150, 150 to 175, and 175 to 200 yards — what Justin calls the iron play triple crown. When Morikawa is in full flight, the only real debate is whether he or Scottie Scheffler is the best approach player in the men’s game. He already has a PGA Championship. He already has an Open Championship. If the game is getting healthy again, nobody should be surprised if he shows up overseas and posts one of those rounds that changes a tournament. The Open Championship Build Begins Trey and Justin also start the show with a reminder of why this stretch of the golf calendar is different. The Scottish Open comes first. Then the Open Championship. The history, the links golf, the weather, the early mornings, the coffee, the entire experience of going overseas for the oldest major in the sport. For Trey, the Open Championship is still his favorite major. Justin is right there with him. And now Gotterup enters that stretch as one of the most fascinating players in the sport. Five wins since last May. A Scottish Open title defense coming. A major ceiling that suddenly feels much more real. Scottie. Rory. Gotterup. That is the list. And that is why the conversation has changed. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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