A fully healthy Will Zalatoris says this comeback to the PGA Tour feels like no other

Will Zalatoris likes to refer to himself as “kid,” and at 29 he no doubt feels, with good reason, like the best years of his life are ahead of him. It’s just that in the golf world, it seems like the Californian has been around a long time—and maybe, ironically, that’s because he hasn’t been in our consciousness much of late.

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We couldn’t help but marvel at Zalatoris only a few years ago, when he finished second in three different majors in 2021-22. He was easy to root for, with a surfer’s good looks and laid-back demeanor, while possessing the golf chops to finish only one shot back of Hideki Matsuyama in his Masters debut in ’21. Zalatoris also dueled Matt Fitzpatrick to the final hole in the ’22 U.S. Open at Brookline.

Yet, by the final round on that eventful Sunday outside of Boston, Zalatoris knew his body wouldn’t hold up much longer. In fact, he was doing his best to hide an injury that would plague him over the next several years.

“I remember getting out of the car, being in the final two groups; the second your car pulls in you have a camera right there once you get out,” Zalatoris recalled on Tuesday ahead of this week’s The American Express in La Quinta, Calif. “And I remember trying to hide kind of my limp heading into the last round. Just because of how stiff I was and how locked up my back was. And I was still able to go out and possibly win a major.”

Later in ’22, Zalatoris’ back issues came to a head when, while atop the standings in the FedEx Cup Playoffs, the World No. 7 had to shut himself down. He eventually underwent a microdiscectomy in April ’23—at only 26 years old—and was out of competitive golf for eight months.

The 2024 season seemed like he was protecting his health instead of moving on, and last spring, after missing the cut in the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow, Zalatoris and his team made the call that he’d finally have two herniated discs completely replaced by “fake” discs, as he calls them.

“Of course we did the frugal route, took our time, tried to do every modality you can possibly think of under the sun,” Zalatoris said. “Then finally I said, ‘Look, let's go for it.’ [The doctors said] we've got the technology. We've been putting it in long- drive guys. We've been putting it in hockey players. It's been saving guys' careers. So we feel way more comfortable now doing it than we did three years ago.”

Eight months later, Zalatoris says he has renewed confidence about his career that is more than just keeping his fingers crossed and hoping for the best.

“When I say it was the easiest recovery compared to what I had to go through in 2023, it was the differences with this one it was actually solving all of my issues as opposed to kind of taking away some of the issues I had,” he said. “So this is the first time I would say in four years that I haven't been able to not have any sciatica down my legs.

“I think the beauty of this one,” he later added, “is that I feel like for the last two years I wasn't able to practice the way I wanted to, I wasn't able to play the schedule I wanted to. I had to WD from a couple tournaments. This time around I'm pushing myself in the gym harder than I ever have. I'm able to do the things that I haven't been able to do for years. So, I know that's kind of a weird thing to say at 29 years old, but obviously you know what I've been through for the last three, four, five years.”

Zalatoris said that once he had healed, his doctor told him to attack golf as much as he wanted, within reason. At home in Dallas, he said he played 36 holes in a day, sometimes back-to-back.

“I'm so comfortable now with my game; I feel like everything's in a much simpler place,” Zalatoris said. “I'm not at home hitting a million golf balls, trying to figure out my golf swing, when in reality I had a compromised back. I'm now going out and playing golf for a dollar or two with friends. That's stuff that I haven't been able to do. Last fall I made a conscious effort of, once I was able to play 18, go play a bunch of new golf courses, go have some fun. You love the game, love course architecture. Dallas is booming with golf right now, and all these new developments, go check 'em out. That part was actually fun. That was kind of my reprieve from the professional life, even though I was still around the game. I just didn't watch as much as I normally do.”

To save his career, Zalatoris has had to alter his swing mechanics. “A lot of it is actually trying to understand my body a little bit better in terms of just how I rotate around my body,” he said. “A lot of people always were pretty critical of my posture, how much I was kind of diving at the ball. The difference is that I would say over the last year I did a very good job of managing it, but this time around there's no management.”

Back in good health, Zalatoris’ challenge now is to return his game to an elite level. Heading into this week, he’s only competed once since the surgery—in South Africa’s Nedbank Golf Challenge, where Zalatoris’ posted a solo 15th in December while “winning the weekend” with scores of 68-67.

Zalatoris had hoped to compete in the Sony Open in Hawaii last week, but he’s playing this season on a major medical exemption, and his number wasn’t good enough. So, he’ll start in the California desert, head to Torrey Pines next week and look for as many starts as possible in trying to regain full status.

“It's a long story short, it's been a long journey,” Zalatoris said. “But I do feel that this kind of chapter of my life is definitely over, and I feel like [at] 30 to 35, [I] will be feeling a lot better than I was 25 to 30.”

He is, after all, still just a kid.