Surrounded by familiarity, Will Zalatoris needs to win to make FedEx Cup playoffs

Will Zalatoris has strong ties to North Carolina as a former standout at Wake Forest. After four career victories while a Demon Deacon, Zalatoris turned professional a semester early in December 2017 to head out on Tour.

Back in town for the Wyndham Championship this week, the last regular-season stop on the PGA Tour’s 2020-21 schedule, Zalatoris already has visited with his college coach Jerry Haas as well as taken a stroll around campus with his fiancée. It’s where the two met.

“I saw Webb (Simpson) in the locker room earlier and we were kind of joking that there’s a pretty good chance we’ll end up getting paired together,” Zalatoris said of a fellow former Deacon. “Yeah, it’s going to be great. Obviously I played on the Arnold Palmer Scholarship here at Wake and I had a really great time here. Every time I come back, it’s almost spiritual in a weird way.

“Obviously we all love our alma mater, but it was really fun walking around campus yesterday.”

It’s a win-or-die kind of week for Zalatoris at the Wyndham, where he’s playing on a sponsor exemption. As a Special Temporary Member on the PGA Tour, he is not eligible for the playoffs, which begin next week, unless he wins at Sedgefield Country Club this week.

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After injuring himself hitting out of thick rough at the British Open—he ultimately withdrew after the first round at Royal St. George’s—the 24-year-old said it’s “still a pretty big effort every day to get moving.” Before last week’s WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational (where he finished T-8, by the way), Zalatoris was 50-50 on playing out the regular season.

“I hadn’t touched a golf club since the British at that point,” he said. “I just said, you know what, the docs said here’s your parameters, this is what you need to look for, and I went out and actually played on that Sunday and actually felt pretty good, was moving a lot better than I thought. I’m not really getting off my right side. I mean, when you see the distances that I’m hitting balls, you’re thinking, oh, he’s fine, but I typically like hitting kind of a cover cut a lot and I’m just kind of hanging on my back foot and hitting a really high draw.

“I’m getting my speed up and it’s been consistent, but I’m doing okay. I mean, it’s kind of one of those things where I’m just going to keep listening to my body in terms of future plans. Obviously this week, it’s win or go home. Second means as much as missing a cut, so I’ve got nothing to lose this week, but obviously were I not to win, I’m going to keep listening to my body, but as a backup plan, definitely looking at going to Europe.”

There’s a comfort factor at Sedgefield this week that may work to Zalatoris’s advantage. Despite not having played here since 2018, he calls Sedgefield’s greens some of the best on Tour. He’s particularly partial to fast greens (see example: Zalatoris’s run at the Masters title in April at Augusta National).

Zalatoris has a new Scotty Cameron Phantom X 11 putter in play, too. Chalk up the switch to needing to pass the time while not hitting full shots for a couple of weeks because of injury.

“The boredom was kicking in and hitting a few putts whenever I could,” he said. “It’s been a great switch.”