There are two things we’ve learned so far in this young 2026 season, though one may be a little more surprising than the other.
One: Scottie Scheffler is still very good and significantly better than everyone else. Scheffler opened his season with the American Express a few weeks ago and won by four. He made his second start at the WM Phoenix Open last week and finished just one shot out of a play-off – despite posting an uncharacteristic 73 on Thursday, six strokes higher than his worst round over the next three days.
And two? Chris Gotterup is in favour Real.
If you were busy preparing for your Super Bowl watch party or getting your parlays in order and skipped Sunday’s finish, here’s the gist of what you missed: We’re only four events into the PGA Tour season and Gotterup has now won half of them. He has risen to No. 5 in the world rankings and is the second-highest ranked American, behind only Scheffler.
In 2024, Gotterup won the Myrtle Beach Classic for his first Tour victory, although this went largely unnoticed by the larger golfing public as it was an alternate-field event and ended on the same day Rory McIlroy won the Wells Fargo Championship. Gotterup subsequently failed to crack the top 50 in his next eight events; he could have easily been a one-hit wonder.
“I definitely knew I was a work in progress, and I still am,” Gotterup said Sunday after scoring a 64 in the final round and later beating Hideki Matsuyama in a play-off. “But I knew my game was right for here, and I knew that if I kept working and at least had confidence in what I was doing, one day I could be in this position. To say I won four times is pretty crazy.”
Fast forward to July 2025, and Gotterup – this time playing in the same tournament as McIlroy – outlasted the newly crowned Masters champion at the Scottish Open for career win No. 2. That made the 26-year-old former Rutgers and Oklahoma golfer a good story, but there are plenty of those throughout the golf season.
However, everything he has done since has proven that he is much more than that.
He finished third at the Open Championship a week after the Scottish Open and finished 10th at the 3M Open a week later. He also added a T10 at the Tour Championship and closed out the season with a brand new slate of tournaments for 2026. Those haven’t even started yet – he’ll be playing Signature Events like Pebble, the Genesis and Bay Hill for the first time in the coming month – and he’s already proven himself worthy of a spot on the pre-tournament press conference schedules.
He wasted little time in reminding that 2025 was no fluke as he opened the season by winning the Sony Open. After a top 20 finish with the Farmers and now a playoff win in Phoenix, he has won three times in his last 10 starts.
Sunday’s victory included birdies on five of his last six holes, and he again made 18 birdies to beat Matuyama on the first extra hole.
In addition to access to a handful of Signature Events, Gotterup will also make his Masters debut in two months.
After his victory on Sunday, Gotterup was met by CBS reporter Amanda Balionis for the obligatory winner’s interview.
“We saw it at the Scottish Open,” she began, “when the moment is the biggest, when your back is against the wall, that’s when you show up. Where does that come from?”
“You know, a lot of hard work,” Gotterup said, before pausing to calm his emotions. “You make me cry every time.”
With the way he’s been going, you think he’d be used to it by now.
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