After Masters, what’s ahead for golfer Will Zalatoris?
AUGUSTA, Ga. - Will Zalatoris shot a 69 to finish with Tyrrell Hatton in a tie for ninth at the Masters.
More importantly, he came away from the tournament this year feeling good after a back problem forced him to withdraw a year ago and ultimately resulted in surgery.
The procedure, called a microdiscectomy, was aimed at helping two herniated disks in his back. Zalatoris wound up missing most of last year, but his game is clearly starting to come around again. He shot two rounds in the red this week.
“Weeks like this, you need to make as many 10- to 15-footers as you can. I’ve made a few, but I pretty much needed to make double what I made,” he said. “Just get some momentum going for the next six weeks. I’ve got a busy schedule coming up. I want to win one of these six weeks. I love playing a lot of golf in a row and build up a rhythm.”
Zalatoris once appeared to be destined for stardom coming out of Wake Forest, earning the PGA Tour’s rookie of the year award in 2021, after he had shot a final-round 70 in his Masters debut to finish one stroke back of winner Hideki Matsuyama.
The success came from what has been described as a “hyperdynamic” swing, which also put immense strain on the rail-thin Zalatoris’ back.
Later that summer, he was playing in the British Open at Royal St. George’s when he hit into the thick fescue, that ankle-high grass so familiar to links-style courses. Zalatoris reared back, left heel lifting from the ground, and took a mighty cut as he tried to gouge the ball out — and in retrospect, he believes that was the shot that began his path to the operating table.
He wound up with two herniated discs, and there were times that the pain was almost unbearable.
“Probably should’ve gotten it that fall,” Zalatoris said of the microdiscectomy, “but you don’t do that to a 26-year old.”
Instead, Dr. Michael Duffy at the Texas Back Institute sided with other specialists who reviewed the MRIs and believed the most prudent course of treatment would be shots to relieve the inflammation, followed by rest and rehab.
It seemed to be working, too, until Zalatoris got to the driving range at Augusta National a year ago.
He was warming up, just 30 minutes before his opening round, when “I felt my back jar,” he recalled Monday, “and specifically I knew exactly what it was with the two discs. I started feeling the symptoms go down my legs.”
Zalatoris wanted to play that day, perhaps gut through the pain one more time. But he knew his back had been bothering him for a while, so he made the difficult decision to withdraw. He flew home, had an MRI the following day and by 7 a.m. Saturday, when the third round was getting ready to begin at the Masters, Zalatoris was preparing for surgery.
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