NEDBANK GOLF CHALLENGE December 5-8, Gary Player CC
First-time visitor Will Zalatoris is Driven by data
Will Zalatoris.
kept him out of golf for most of 2023. He experienced a golfer’s worst nightmare at Augusta National. Prepar- ing on the range before the start of the first round of the 2023 Masters, his back gave out just 30 minutes before his tee time. Two days later he underwent microdiscec- tomy surgery. He returned to Augusta in April this year and had another top-10 finish in the Masters, but generally has struggled to regain his ear- lier form. His World Ranking has fallen to No 64. Now 28, the wiry Zalatoris relies on data and statistics perhaps more than anyone on the PGA Tour, this side of Bryson DeChambeau. Zala- toris was the first adopter of DECADE, a course-manage- ment system developed by Scott Fawcett, a 47-year-old data guru who holds three maths degrees. The second adopter, in a stroke of irony, was DeChambeau. When Zalatoris won the Texas State Amateur as a 17-year-old in 2014, Fawcett was on the bag. That was the first week they put the DECADE system into play. We’re summarising here, but DECADE is a maths- based approach to strategy that prioritises data over folklore. It combines PGA Tour scoring statistics with shot-dispersion patterns to inform players on club se- lection and lines to aim for. Avoiding mistakes takes precedence over flag-hunt- ing. Playing to the fat part
t’s positive news to see PGA Tour stars again supporting Africa’s richest tour- nament, adding an
extra dimension of qual- ity and interest to the field, which will be the largest in the history of the Nedbank Challenge. Will Zalatoris is a potential superstar who could quite easily have a breakout year in the majors as Xander Schauffele has en- joyed in 2024. He’s already been a runner-up in three different majors in his brief career on the PGA Tour. Zalatoris was a Korn Fer- ry Tour player when out of the blue he starred in the 2020 “Pandemic” US Open at Winged Foot, played in September without specta- tors. A sixth-place tie in that championship got him spon- sor’s exemptions on the PGA Tour, and in no time at all he had played himself into the Top 50 of the World Rank- ing. That secured him an invite to the 2021 Masters where on his debut he fin- ished runner-up to Hideki Matsuyama. The following year he lost a playoff in the PGA Cham- pionship at Southern Hills to Justin Thomas, and was T-2 in the US Open at Brookline behind Matt Fitzpatrick after missing a birdie putt on the final hole to force another playoff. He also had his first and only victory on the PGA Tour. His World Ranking had soared as high as No 7 before emergency back surgery
your comfort zone. Zalatoris shares that belief. He likes to cut his driver, and he’s taken his fade with him to a variety of major cham- pionship venues, where he’s played his best golf. The Gary Player Country Club, one of the most de- manding tournament ven- ues in the world, might be eminently suitable for his approach to golf.
of the green is the name of the game. So is trusting your shot dispersion. Fawcett holds a steadfast belief that trying to work the ball both ways with the driver will only widen that dispersion chart. When the club is moving that fast, even a slight miss can result in a round-killing mistake, and slight misses are more likely when you’re deviating from
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