Back in 2024, Chris Gotterup started his rookie season in Honolulu, just not by playing the Sony Open. Instead, Gotterup was among several Korn Ferry Tour graduates who had been unexpectedly buried on the alternate list for the tournament yet still mandated to attend the PGA Tour’s rookie orientation at the Royal Hawaiian Resort on Waikiki Beach. With no time to practice for the Monday qualifier, Gotterup withdrew from that and flew home.
What a difference two years can make.
Gotterup will crack the top 20 in the Official World Golf Ranking for the first time on Monday, climbing to No. 17 on the heels of Sunday’s two-shot Sony Open victory, his third in as many years. He’s unquestionably, at age 26, one of the sport’s rising stars, no longer just a burly masher who broke out as the NCAA player of the year his graduate season at Oklahoma but so far had been an all-or-nothing tour pro.
Two years ago, Gotterup missed over half his cuts (13 of 25) but kept his card thanks to an opposite-event win in Myrtle Beach. Last season, Gotterup kicked off his year at The Sentry, but he beat only 12 guys there before missing the Sony cut to begin a run of seven missed weekends in nine events. But again, Gotterup won, at the Genesis Scottish Open, and after not posting a top-10 finish prior to that, he rattled off a third at The Open and T-10 at the 3M to advance to the BMW Championship and secure spots in all the signature events this year.
Though he earned an invite to Tiger Woods’ Hero World Challenge, was top 30 in the world at year’s end and was in line to join TGL as a reserve, Gotterup was realistic. In his mind, he hadn’t fully arrived, still too feast or famine for his liking.
“I like to think I’m a good listener of my productive criticism from my team,” Gotterup said. “We sat down a did a bunch of stats stuff at the end of the year. There were a couple things that stood out.”
1. He lost a “severe amount” of strokes from 100 to 150 yards.
2. He didn’t make nearly enough putts from 9 to 20 feet.
“That’s all I really practiced,” Gotterup said of his offseason work, which came in his new home state of Florida, where he moved to late last year from Oklahoma. (Gotterup is originally from New Jersey.)
“This week,” he added, “I feel like everything I practiced, I had those numbers and those putts … and I felt a little more confident in what I was doing.”
While Gotterup’s approach play wasn’t necessarily sharp this week, he only carded three bogeys with a wedge in hand, none on Sunday. Last year at Sony, he had two in 36 holes. On the greens this weekend, Gotterup converted six birdie putts in the focus range, plus two from even longer on the back nine Sunday.
Add further improvement to his already top-10 game off the tee – he led the Sony field in that facet, gaining over four strokes – and Gotterup will feast much more often.
“The more you play, the more comfortable you are, the more you don’t feel like you have to press and grind all the time,” Gotterup said. “You just get comfortable with being out here, and it’s a marathon of a season and all this stuff. I think that is a much more freeing feeling than being like, I got to play well this week, and it’s the first week.
“Where it’s like now, all right let’s see what happens.”