ORLANDO — As he ambled down the first fairway at Bay Hill Club during Wednesday’s Arnold Palmer Invitational pro-am after launching one of his standard guided missiles, Chris Gotterup casually flipped a gold ball marker in the air. The shiny metal token sported the familiar logo of Augusta National Golf Club, one of the several items he had purchased during his first visit to the home of the Masters the week prior.
“I bought a bunch of them that are in my bag,” Gotterup admitted. “But I’ve got all sorts of different ones. I just happened to grab this one today. I like it.”
RELATED: 52 fun stats for 52 years of the Players
The selection might have been random, but it served as a convenient metaphor. With a maturing, strategic intellect and a blossoming skill set complementing Gotterup’s immense reserves of power, major titles seem likely to be well within his grasp.
More Players Championship Preview stories 
FAQ Players 2026: Everything you need to know about the PGA Tour’s flagship event at TPC Sawgrass 
Ranking Players Championship picks 2026: Our 13 best bets to win at TPC Sawgrass 
Analysis Players 2026: Behind the scenes of the PGA Tour’s renewed pursuit of major status for the Players
In less than three full seasons on the PGA Tour, Gotterup has secured four wins—three of which have come in the last eight months and two in six starts this season. (And if certain pieces fall into place, another win could come on Sunday as he enters the final round at Bay Hill tied for seventh, just six shots back of 54-hole leader Daniel Berger.) Already Gotterup has displayed poise on the biggest stages, too. Last July, in just his fourth career major appearance, Gotterup finished third in his Open Championship debut at Royal Portrush the week after he outdueled World No. 2 Rory McIlroy at the Genesis Scottish Open.
RELATED: Players tee times for first two rounds
As he heads to TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach for the year’s first tournament of major importance—the tour’s flagship event, the Players Championship—Gotterup is still coming to terms not with who he is as a golfer but who he is becoming in golf.
Chris Gotterup set out to improve his iron approaches and mid-range putting this season, and he’s made strong progress in both.
Orlando Ramirez
Ranked sixth in the world, the burly Gotterup is considered one of the favorites, no longer flying under the radar and certainly not unknown. He receives congratulatory texts from the likes of NBA players Keldon Johnson and Blake Griffin, among other athletes. Edward Sharp Walsh, the U.S. Ambassador to Ireland, made a point of watching him at Royal Portrush. And last fall he played golf with President Donald Trump at Trump Bedminster in New Jersey, the state Gotterup calls home, though he was born in Maryland.
“I’m not a politics guy, but you can’t say no to playing with the president,” he said. “I’ve met some really cool people. It’s weird. The attention … it’s been a big adjustment for me. I’m just a normal dude who happens to be decent at golf.”
To say that Gotterup has surged into elite status from the ether, that his rise has been meteoric, is to admit a lack of recognition of his preternatural ability and potential. He started from a much higher floor than many realize. He is not a late bloomer, not at age 26, and with notable collegiate credentials. Jason Birnbaum, Gotterup’s longtime swing coach, lets names like Nicklaus, Hogan and Trevino roll off his tongue when describing the attributes Gotterup brings to a crowded table overflowing with talented competitors hungry to succeed.
“That’s a good way of putting it; his base, talent-wise, was always right there,” said Bhrett McCabe, an Alabama sports psychologist who began working with Gotterup last spring. “If you look at a lot of players, you might say, where did they come from? Well, they were getting better at their craft. But they all start from a fairly high base, and they are talented. Chris has been very mature about his development. He has continued to do the little things very well to improve on his strengths.”
“There’s a lot of the greats in Chris’ overall game, which he’s really had that since he was a kid, and that’s something you can’t coach.”
Jason Birnbaum, Chris Gotterup’s longtime swing coach
Yes, his strengths.
“We all improve based on the things that we do well, and there’s a reason for that,” McCabe said. “We succeed from our strengths because we know them. And we understand how to improve on them. We understand what it takes. Chris is interested in that all the time. He makes incremental improvements, and then when he gets into a competitive environment, he has a lot of confidence.”
Gotterup’s greatest strength is obvious; his disrespect of the golf ball off the tee causes ringing in your ears should you be loitering in his vicinity. The tour is well populated with long hitters, but Gotterup has a gear that can only be appreciated in person and isn’t defined by numbers alone. You can hear and feel the moment of impact. He ranks fifth on tour in driving distance at 322.2 yards a pop, but that’s factoring in how often he throttles back to minimize foul balls, often with the use of his 13-degree mini-driver that he bunts about 315 yards.
“He’s got like a Jack Nicklaus build, but he has a [Lee] Trevino setup. He’s got a little bit of Ben Hogan in his legwork,” said Birnbaum, whose work with the player began when Gotterup was 13. “There’s a lot of the greats in Chris’ overall game, which he’s really had that since he was a kid, and that’s something you can’t coach.”
“Everyone always asks, like, what changed,” said Gotterup, who accepts the pure contradiction of the answer—not much and yet plenty. “I definitely wasn’t on the fast track to the PGA Tour, but I feel like earning my way through all the rankings and stuff, I’ve kind of proven myself each step.”
Growing up in Little Silver, N.J., Gotterup, whose father Morten won several tournaments at the state level, was a solid junior golfer, and he broke par for the first time when he was 13, earning a trip with his dad and brother to Pebble Beach. But because he didn’t compete in AJGA events, he didn’t garner wide attention before opting to play golf at nearby Rutgers University. With one year of eligibility remaining, Gotterup transferred to Oklahoma in 2021, where he began to fulfill his potential.
“I would be naive to say that Oklahoma didn’t change my trajectory in golf,” said Gotterup, who won the 2022 Jack Nicklaus Award and Fred Haskins Award as the top collegiate golfer in Division I after a season that included a pair of wins and a T-5 finish at the NCAA Championship. His 69.83 scoring average was the third best in program history.
Chris Gotterup and caddie Brady Stockton celebrate winning the 2026 Sony Open.
Cliff Hawkins
His trajectory has kept gravitating upward. In his second professional start after the NCAAs, Gotterup immediately proved his chops, finishing T-4 on a sponsor’s exemption at the John Deere Classic. He needed just one year on the Korn Ferry Tour before graduating to the PGA Tour, and in 2024 he captured his first tour title at the Myrtle Beach Classic—the first event at which he employed the mini-driver—shooting 22-under 262 to win by six strokes.
However, he still was a raw talent and learning the ropes, often while spraying too many tee balls outside them. He missed the cut in seven of his remaining 13 starts in his rookie season. Eight more early dismissals to start 2025 required a reset. Roughly one year ago, Gotterup hooked up with McCabe, and in April he hired Brady Stockton, a former professional golfer, as his caddie. Their first event together was the Corales Puntacana Championship in the Dominican Republic, where Gotterup reeled off the first of four straight finishes of 18th or better.
After Gotterup placed T-23 at the U.S. Open at Oakmont, Stockton talked on the flight home to Phoenix with former caddie Jim “Bones” Mackay, now a broadcaster for NBC Sports. “Bones didn’t know I was working for him,” Stockton said, “but when I told him, he asked me, ‘How is he?’ And I was like, ‘He’s about to go off.’ I could just tell he was playing so good. Three weeks later he won Genesis.”
“He is not like Bubba Watson, but I’ve compared him to caddying for someone like Bubba, because I think when Ted Scott was Bubba’s caddie, they didn’t talk clubs that much. It was more about the type of shot.”
Brady Stockton, Chris Gotterup’s caddie
Birnbaum sensed it, too. He and Gotterup were in the midst of refining his swing, not necessarily fixing a flaw but increasing its reliability.
“I would say it’s simply that we’ve rounded out his golf swing,” Birnbaum said. “Chris likes to aim left. He sets up very open to the target. So when he makes an upright swing, coupled with being open, he puts a lot of cut spin on the ball. So now it’s almost like he has a draw-shape swing from a fade stance, and it turns into these kind of Trevino-ish shots. He has more control and he can take advantage of his driver. He is an elite driver of the golf ball; it’s his number one weapon.”
But it’s not his only weapon, as Stockton observed. “He has so much natural ability and can hit so many different shots,” he said. “A lot of times we’re talking about the kind of shot he wants to hit as opposed to just distance. I try to let him be himself and create the shots he sees. He is not like Bubba Watson, but I’ve compared him to caddieing for someone like Bubba, because I think when Ted Scott was Bubba’s caddie, they didn’t talk clubs that much. It was more about the type of shot.”
More Players Championship Preview stories 
Course Strategy Players 2026: 3 weird spots you see players miss at TPC Sawgrass 
What-If History 11 ways golf would be different if the Players Championship was a major all along 
Golf Digest Logo What would you shoot at TPC Sawgrass under Players Championship conditions?
At the end of last season, in which he finished tied for 10th at the Tour Championship but was not chosen for the U.S. Ryder Cup team, Gotterup worked with his team to start adding more to his arsenal. They drilled down into his statistics and addressed two disciplines—approach shots from 100-150 yards and putting from 10-20 feet. There’s a correlation there.
In the former, just to pull out one number—approaches from 125-150 yards—Gotterup has improved by more than five feet, hitting it, on average, a little more than 19 feet from the hole. He ranks 24th on tour with that performance. Last year he ranked 149th. On the putting side of the equation, he began working with Tim Yelverton, mostly on speed control. The result is that his putting numbers have improved across the board from seven feet up to the 25-foot range.
Combine all that with his strokes-gained rank off the tee (fourth) and you’ve created a very lethal competitor whose actual scoring average has dropped by nearly a stroke, from 69.29 in 2025 to 68.39, and he is playing with supreme confidence.
Even when Chris Gotterup dials back on his driving, he still is among the longest hitters on the tour.
Icon Sportswire
Although his early top-five finish at John Deere hinted at his viability as a pro golfer, Gotterup said he wasn’t entirely comfortable on tour until he beat McIlroy and Marco Penge with a final-round 66 at The Renaissance Club in Scotland to win by two strokes.
“I felt like I was playing better even if I wasn’t playing great. But then getting it done at Genesis, I was really kind of like, ‘All right, I’m here.’”
If it wasn’t obvious then that he had arrived, his performance at Royal Portrush was added validation. Then he left no doubt with his season-opening victory at the Sony Open in Hawaii, followed by a playoff win over Hideki Matsuyama at the WM Phoenix Open. On both occasions, Gotterup opened with 63s and closed with 64s. And while Matsuyama dished out an assist at TPC Scottsdale by bogeying his final hole in regulation, Stockton credits Gotterup for refusing to concede in the late stages.
“He seems to really lock in with his focus under pressure,” Stockton said.
Gotterup birdied five of his final six holes to put pressure on Matsuyama and then birdied the first playoff hole from 27 feet for the title. And, by the way, that opening 63 he shot three days earlier at TPC Scottsdale was in the presence of Scottie Scheffler, beating the World’s No. 1 player by 10 shots.
Birnbaum wasn’t surprised by Gotterup’s rally at Phoenix, even though Gotterup had missed the cut in Arizona the previous two years. “He’s really good at taking courses apart that he’s a little more familiar with,” said Birnbaum, also pointing to Waialae Country Club, where Gotterup had missed the cut in the Sony Open last year. “Seeing these courses a second or third time has been big. He’s an aggressive-style player by nature. He probably had a little bit of recklessness to his aggressiveness in the beginning, just firing at pins, trying to hit a shape that he may not be comfortable with, but now he’s smarter when it comes to aggressive play.”
Which brings us to the Players, where Gotterup—you might have guessed—missed the cut last March in his maiden appearance at TPC Sawgrass. “I didn’t play that great there last year, so I’m excited to get a little redemption.,” Gotterup said. “I’m in a different place now.”
That in itself is important. Just as important—and quite intriguing—is where he might be headed. He is only 84 starts into his PGA Tour career. He has belief in his abilities, and his team has belief in his potential—and Gotterup will tell you that the team he has assembled is a crucial factor to his success. While his style might conjure visions of Nicklaus, Hogan and Trevino, Gotterup is a prototype modern touring professional—strong, skilled, cerebral and committed to leaving no dimpled stone unturned.
“His upside is tremendous, mostly because of his physical ability,” Birnbaum said. “He really has learned how to play the game, how to attack a golf course, but with his strength, he can really do some damage.”
“It’s been a ton of fun being a part of Chris’ career and seeing the kind of growth we’ve seen in such a short period of time,” Stockton added. “As far as he hits it and as well as he manages his game, there’s really no ceiling to his capabilities.”
What does Gotterup think of all this? “I’m just really appreciating all the opportunities and the support I receive from my team,” he said modestly. “I have expectations every week to play well. But I would say everyone else out here would say the same thing. If I don’t, then I’m not doing what I’m supposed to be doing. Obviously, I’m excited for the year and what’s ahead. I just want to be ready, prepare the best I can and give it everything I’ve got.”
Yup, Chris Gotterup is just a normal dude who happens to be good at golf. And he will only get better. Odds on that seem a lot higher than the flip of a coin.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
