1/22/25

LaMagna’s Weekly Update: Longevity Tiers, Will Zalatoris, and Analyzing Torrey Pines

The fourth edition of Joseph's comprehensive weekly pro golf update

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Welcome to the fourth edition of my weekly professional golf update. 

Over the past few years, I have developed a deeper appreciation for professional golfers who are competitive over a long period of time. Many names enter and exit the competitive landscape over two to five-year windows. Only the greats play at a high level for 10+ years.  

So today I’ve tiered the men’s professional golfers who have best demonstrated longevity in the 21st century. My criteria involved a mix of consistency and winning, restricted mostly to major championships. Before you get mad about anything, this is not a ranking. I’m aware that Brooks Koepka has accomplished more than some of the names above him. This exercise is primarily based on longevity, with players categorized based on how much they’ve achieved over a significant stretch of time.

A few notes: 

Rory McIlroy: If you take issue with where McIlroy is tiered, be serious. He has a top 10 in a major every year since 2009. Should he have more than zero major wins over the last ten years? Absolutely. But from a longevity perspective, McIlroy is the model of consistency in the modern era. 

Jon Rahm/Scottie Scheffler/Xander Schauffele: The Rahm/Scheffler/Schauffele tier serves as a dividing line in this exercise. It’s unlikely, though not impossible, that any of the golfers below them will end up in a tier above where they are now. Rahm, Scheffler, and Schauffele have already put together solid résumés with multiple wins and are still relatively young. Ten to 12 more years of high-level golf seems difficult but possible for these three. They’re all candidates to finish their careers in a higher tier than where they are located now. If they sputter out over the next few years, they’ll go in the tier below.

Padraig Harrington: Whenever you do an exercise like this, some player’s results are going to surprise you. Harrington’s three major wins are obviously impressive, but I was surprised to see an additional eight top-five finishes. It’s also pretty incredible that he has a top-five finish in both 1997 and 2021. Considering both his win total and longevity, he deserves respect in an exercise like this. If he’d performed better between 2013 and 2020, his longevity could have pushed him into a higher tier. 

Matt Kuchar: I went into this exercise expecting Kuchar to make it into a tier. He’s frequently mentioned as potentially the best player of the modern era without a major win. But when you look at his results on paper, it’s…not great? He posted 12 top-10 finishes over ten years (2010-2019). Outside of Birkdale in 2017, he hasn’t been much of a threat to win one, either. Frankly, Lee Westwood’s career is far more impressive. 

Collin Morikawa/Bryson DeChambeau: Both of these golfers will likely make the graphic eventually. I just want to see their careers unfold a little bit more before deciding where they belong. 

Player Spotlight: Will Zalatoris 

Four golfers in the history of the sport have finished in the top 10 in their first three Masters appearances: Paul Runyan (1934-1936), Ralph Guldahl (1937-1939), Jordan Spieth (2014-2016), and Will Zalatoris (2021-2024). 

Will Zalatoris is a special ballstriker. In 2020-21, his first full season on the PGA Tour, he ranked seventh in Strokes Gained: Approach. The next season, he ranked 1st. Then, a back injury started to derail his career. The week after his first win on the PGA Tour, Zalatoris withdrew from the 2022 BMW Championship. The following April, he withdrew from the 2023 Masters prior to his Thursday tee time due to pain in his back. Will ultimately underwent a successful microdiscectomy immediately after his withdrawal, sidelining him for the next seven months. 

In 2024, Zalatoris’ health improved, but he struggled to regain the ball speed that had been an advantage prior to the injuries. He fell from 15th on Tour in ball speed in 2022 to 67th in 2024. His back wasn’t without issue, either, as he withdrew from the Rocket Mortgage last summer after experiencing pain. 

Nearly a month into the 2025 season, Zalatoris claims to be feeling healthy and strong. Over this past offseason, he’s put on a significant amount of muscle, which he hopes will allow him to swing at a high speed without causing back issues. Through two starts this year, the results have been encouraging, albeit not stellar. He finished T-26 at The Sentry and T-12 at the American Express, gaining strokes with his ballstriking in both tournaments.

(Editor’s note: Zalatoris withdrew from the Farmers Insurance Open on Wednesday morning after this post was published). This week’s Farmers Insurance Open, however, is the true litmus test for where Zalatoris’ game stands. A long hitter with superb long-iron play, Zalatoris should be champing at the bit to get out on the 7,600-yard Torrey Pines, where he lost in a playoff to Luke List in 2022. Torrey is much closer to a major championship-level test than the vast majority of golf courses on the PGA Tour, and Will’s track record in majors is nothing to scoff at. In 14 career major starts, he has accumulated three runners-up, including a playoff loss to Justin Thomas at the 2022 PGA Championship and two losses by one stroke. A healthy Zalatoris is a threat to win any golf tournament, let alone a favorable setup against a field lacking many of the best players in the world. As is often the case for Will, his short-range putting is the facet of his game most likely to hold him back this week. He’s never been a good putter inside 10 feet. 

When reflecting on Zalatoris’ skillset, I’m inclined to compare him to an early-career Adam Scott – the power off the tee, the brilliant iron play, and the woes with the putter. One of the biggest differences between the two is Zalatoris’ drastically better major championship results in the beginning phase of his career. 

Zalatoris played one major in 2018, which was before he’d earned a PGA Tour card. I’d consider the 2020 U.S. Open the true start of his major championship career. Since the 2020 U.S. Open, Zalatoris has seven top-10 finishes in 13 major starts – a 54% top-10 rate. Of golfers with at least 10 major starts over the same period, only Scottie Scheffler (67%) and Rory McIlroy (58%) have finished in the top 10 at a better clip. For reference, Adam Scott didn’t get his seventh top 10 in a major until his 44th appearance. 

Once ranked as high as seventh in the Official World Golf Ranking, Will Zalatoris could very well be the most underrated golfer on the planet right now. Assuming he stays healthy, there aren’t many golfers I’d take ahead of Zalatoris at Augusta National. Or at Torrey Pines, for that matter. 

Reader-Submitted Question 

Reader: I get it. Torrey Pines could be better architecturally. Can you offer some insight into how the golf course actually plays, though? I’m a little fatigued of the “Torrey Pines stinks” talk, especially since it’s one of the PGA Tour courses I most enjoy watching. 

Answer: Fair, I do sense some Torrey Pines critique fatigue. To your point about Torrey being one of the courses you most enjoy watching, one of the South Course’s greatest assets is that the air is cold and heavy, so the golf ball doesn’t travel as far as it does on other courses. It’s 7,600 yards, and it plays all of that yardage. Part of Torrey’s appeal is that it is closer to a rolled-back version of the sport than most other courses on Tour. Thus, it is a more physical, athletic test played on a scale closer to how the game was intended to play than, say, PGA West. 

All right, I’m not going to spare you entirely of architectural critiques because it’s an integral part of discussing the test that is Torrey Pines, but let’s get a little bit into the golf course design and its impact on how the course tests professional golfers. 

An under-discussed factor at Torrey Pines is fairway bunker play. There is no golf course on the PGA Tour where more tee shots end up in a fairway bunker than at Torrey Pines. That may be all you need to hear to decide that fairway bunker play is important, but it’s worth digging in a little deeper to truly appreciate why fairway bunkers are such a big factor here. 

First off, Torrey Pines has extremely narrow fairways, many of which are lined with fairway bunkers. Inevitably, that combination will lead to a high percentage of tee shots ending up in fairway bunkers. However, that’s not the key reason shots end up in these hazards. The crucial point is that fairway bunkers are often within players’ natural dispersion patterns with an optimal target off the tee. 

Ok, what does that mean? 

Consider the fourth hole. The entire left side is bound by a penalty hazard – one of the most beautiful natural hazards in golf. At the tee-shot length landing area, the fairway is just over 25 yards wide. When faced with a tee shot like this, professional golfers wisely favor the right side of the fairway, resulting in a dispersion pattern that overlaps with the right-hand fairway bunker. Thus, the bunker becomes a popular tee-shot location.

In other words, finding the fairway bunker isn’t necessarily a right “miss.” Often, well-executed tee shots naturally find the bunker due to players’ targets. Unlike at other golf courses, if you’re finding fairway bunkers at Torrey Pines, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re struggling. 

In fact, at the 2017 Farmers Insurance Open, Jon Rahm found six fairway bunkers on the weekend. He played those six holes in 3-under par. He ultimately won the tournament by three.

The fourth hole at Torrey is an example of why many people, myself included, advocate for wider setups. Widening the fourth hole would not decrease the premium for driving accuracy. In fact, it would actually allow accurate hitters to realize their advantage by finding a hittable fairway instead of aiming in the direction of the fairway bunker. This is one of the reasons that some of professional golf’s wildest hitters find success at Torrey Pines. As long as you aim away from penalty hazards and blast driver, you don’t need to hit the ball particularly accurately – wide misses are not penalized heavily at Torrey Pines. Sure, it still helps to hit the ball accurately, of course. It just doesn’t benefit you as much at Torrey Pines as it does on other golf courses. 

The fourth hole is not the only hole that encourages this style of play. The seventh hole is another excellent example, a narrow dogleg right that, yes, fails to engage the canyon lining the right side of the hole. Right misses off the tee still spell serious danger, as you are hacking out of thick rough with a tree between the ball and the green, which is set at an angle that prevents attacking the green from the right-hand rough. Therefore, players target the left-hand side of the fairway, bringing the left-hand fairway bunker squarely (i.e. conely?) into their range of outcomes. 

The seventh hole at Torrey Pines (South).

And finally, the 17th hole encapsulates this dynamic as well as any hole on the property. The 24-yard wide fairway is lined by a natural hazard on the left and a fairway bunker down the right, leading to many tee shots finding the fairway bunkers. 

The 17th hole at Torrey Pines (South).

That isn’t necessarily criticism of the 17th hole. I enjoy the test that the 17th presents, especially the way the tee shot engages the canyon down the left. Nonetheless, you can see how Nos. 4, 7, and 17 demote accuracy by bringing part of the fairway out of players’ dispersion patterns with an optimal line off the tee. Or, framed differently, the dimensions of these holes bring fairway bunkers into the range of outcomes. 

Also, notice in the above screenshot of the 17th how the widest right misses do not find a penalty. As long as you’re not finding a penalty hazard, you can generally hit pretty wild tee shots at Torrey and get away with them. Your ball might even end up on a trampled-down piece of rough along the cart path.  Tiger Woods understood this as well as anybody, and he won at Torrey Pines eight times. He also won at Bay Hill eight times, which is essentially a Florida-fied version of Torrey Pines but with more water hazards. To be clear, Tiger won a lot because he’s arguably the best to ever touch a golf club, but intelligent course management hasn’t hurt him. 

By the way, remember that famous Tiger Woods shot on the first hole at Torrey Pines in the 2008 U.S. Open? The one where Stevie Williams recalls hearing Tiger’s knee crack? Yeah, that shot was from a clean lie in the rough after a wide miss, where Tiger is standing on the cart path. (Watch the video here).

 

Tiger Woods on the first hole at Torrey Pines in the 2008 U.S. Open.

Closing things out, I don’t hate Torrey Pines. I’m excited to watch this week. I do, however, have a strong preference for golf courses where the playing corridors are wide enough for shots to navigate the hazards. More short-grass area enables the land to be used more dynamically. Think Augusta National. 

You may not share that same preference. And that’s ok. I’m not trying to convince anyone that golf at Torrey Pines isn’t fun to watch. It just could be vastly improved by expanding playing corridors and making better use of the natural hazards.  

Ok, that’s all for this week. Have a question you’d like me to answer for next week? Email me at joseph@thefriedegg.com!