Gotterup heats up all the way to world No. 5
He's arrived as two-time winner already in 2026; OWGR points prove huge lift to LIV
Chris Gotterup is currently the hottest player on the PGA Tour (Alex Goodlett/Getty Images)
Four tournaments into the 2026 PGA Tour season, we already have a two-time winner. Odds are that few predicted it would be Chris Gotterup to pick up victories in half the tournaments at this point.
Gotterup — who won the Genesis Scottish Open last year while outplaying Rory McIlory down the stretch — has now won four tour events going back to the 2024 Myrtle Beach Classic and has moved all the way to No. 5 in the Official World Golf Ranking after winning the WM Phoenix Open in a playoff on Sunday. He also won the season-opening Sony Open in Hawaii with a similar Sunday charge from behind.
Just 10 months ago, Gotterup was ranked No. 228 in the world. It took a minute, but he is living up to his potential when he won the the Haskins and Jack Nicklaus awards as the top collegiate golfer his final season at Oklahoma.
“I don’t know. I’m just really enjoying being out here right now, and I’m having fun,” said Gotterup, 26, who will make his Masters debut this spring. “I feel confident in what I’m doing and feel like I have played well enough to feel confident to be able to be in those positions. So far, I’ve been able to capitalize on those, and I’m excited for the rest of the year.
“I’ve got a bunch of tournaments coming up that I haven’t played in some cool spots. Really just looking forward to what’s to come.”
Gotterup’s final-round 64 at TPC Scottsdale included five birdies on his last six holes of regulation, and then another birdie on the first extra hole to beat two-time Phoenix winner Hideki Matsuyama — who bogeyed the final hole to drop into the playoff.
The Japanese star and 2021 Masters champion had a bad driving day and then the misfortune of a spectator causing disruptions on his final par putt in regulation and again on the tee in the playoff (the latter was believed to be accidental) and again having him back off his shots.
But it was somewhat amazing that Matsuyama was in position to win in the first place, shooting a final-round 68 despite his erratic tee shots that ultimately cost him on the 72n hole.
The rest of Matsuyama’s game saved him despite hitting just two fairways on Sunday. He finished the week ranked top-three in the field for every other strokes-gained category but was 70th off the tee, losing more than four strokes.
“It’s disappointing, shock,” Matsuyama, who has 11 victories on the PGA Tour, said via his translator. “Learn from it, and just get back up on the horse next week.”
Gotterup didn’t seem to be a factor at the start of the final round. He led after the first round, but scores of 71-70 in the middles rounds are a bit ordinary at the birdie-fest that is TPC Scottsdale. That meant he needed a low one on Sunday to have any chance at all. He caught fire down the stretch and capped it with a shot to 2 feet on the 18th hole in regulation for the birdie that ultimately led to the tie. He had to wait around on the practice tee for more than a hour for Matsuyama to finish.
“I didn’t think this (win) would happen, especially after Friday and Saturday,” Gotterup said. “But here we are.”
Scottie Scheffler finished tied for third after shooting his first over-par score (73) in the first round since the Travelers Championship in July. His final-round 64 briefly had him tied for the lead but proved to be one short.
At the place where Scheffler got the first of his 20 PGA Tour victories four years ago, Scheffler made a game of it. He has not finished outside of the top 10 since last year’s Players Championship.
That is not a surprise these days. Gotterup’s two-victory run to start the season — which includes a tie for 18th at the Farmers Insurance Open — perhaps should not be as well.
Elvis Smylie climbed to No. 77 in the OWGR with his LIV win in Riyadh (Pedro Salado/LIV Golf)
Missing the point? OWGR gave LIV a boost
There’s been a good bit of moaning from the LIV Golf camp about the restrictions placed on the Official World Golf Ranking points the league is receiving as opposed to celebrating its inclusion in the OWGR and the huge boost it presents to its players.
Australia’s Elvis Smylie won the season-opener in Riyadh and jumped from 134th in the world to 77th. The means the 23-year-old LIV rookie has got a realistic shot of moving into the top 50 by April to earn his first invitation to the Masters with more strong play on LIV.
Jon Rahm, who is woefully underranked as LIV events have not received points until now, jumped 30 spots from No. 97 to to 67 with his runner-up, getting him closer to where he belongs.
LIV is complaining about what it didn’t get instead of cheering what it did — meaningful points for top-10 finishers. Only Peter Uihlein seemed to grasp the significance of what the OWGR has bestowed upon them.
“I might be one of the few that like it,” Uihlein said last week before finishing third and moving from 199th to 154th in the world rankings. “We have more world ranking points today than we did yesterday. I saw the winner gets 23 points this week. In Qatar, [winner Patrick Reed] gets 20. In my mind we’re the second best tour in the world right now. Obviously there are things that probably need to get worked out with the top 10 or whatever, but the reality is we have more points today than we did yesterday. I’m all for it.”
The league is getting what every other event that has 57 players would receive based on those players field performance points. It made no adjustments.
Where it did adjust came in the form of allotting fewer points overall because it only passes out points to the top 10 finishers and ties. Basically, the OWGR is penalizing LIV for not fully complying, and spelled it out in its announcement last week.
“The Board’s overriding aim was to identify an equitable way of ranking the best men’s players in the world, including the top performing players in LIV Golf, while taking account of the eligibility standards that LIV Golf does not currently meet and the fact that it operates differently from other ranked tours in a number of respects,” it said.
You have to really get into the OWGR weeds to understand what occurred, but in simple terms, the event in Saudi Arabia was deemed worth 108 overall ranking points. But the OWGR cut it off at the 75 points that would go to the top-10 finishers. The rest of the points do not get reallocated to the top guys.
LIV Golf called this “unprecedented” and it is — but so is LIV Golf. Its process of picking players and having relatively few qualifying spots is a problem for the OWGR. So it made some concessions and got LIV Golf in the door.
The league should be grateful rather than spiteful.
“Yeah, it’s definitely a step in the right direction,” said Smylie. “I think there’s still more work to be done, but I think … everyone here at LIV have done a really good job of being able to give us players the opportunity to be able to benefit from ranking points, which will therefore get us into the majors, which is incredibly important, for me especially. But it’s great that we’re able to do that on a platform like LIV now.”
Uihlein can take reasonable aim at reaching the top 100. David Puig can still dream of the Masters, as his fourth-place tie saw him move up to 87th from 95th.
“It’s fantastic that we’re getting points. It’s fantastic that we’re being recognized in a way,” said Rahm. “With that said, I don’t like how we’re not being treated the same as every other tour. It seems like the rules that have been in place don’t really apply to us, with only 10 of us only getting points. It doesn’t seem fair. The small fields out there throughout the course of the year, their players get full points.
“There’s work to be done. While it’s good for some people, it could cause some players to actually lose world ranking points instead of gaining them because finishing 11th is basically a missed cut, and we’re already adding to the divisor.”
Thomas Detry actually lost ground finishing seventh and going from 62nd to 63rd, but that’s because Detry played a full schedule of PGA Tour and DP World Tour events over the past two years and has a divisor of 52 — the maximum. The 3.67 points he earned did not help increase his average points.
This is going to take some time to play out. But it’s a good result for LIV and one that will see the events take on more meaning not only as players attempt to qualify for the Masters, but the PGA Championship, U.S. Open and British Open as well.