Chris Gotterup came back to the John Deere Classic this week saying the player who showed up in 2022 is not the same one standing here now. He still likes the memory of a tied-for-fourth finish in what he called his third tournament as a pro, but he says three PGA Tour wins have changed the way he sees himself on the course.
“Hopefully a similar person, but yeah, definitely a different player,” Gotterup said. “I think, you know, especially here my first year, I think it was like my third tournament as a pro, came in fourth. I was like, all right, I think I got something here.”
That feeling has since turned into a rapid rise. Gotterup finished T-3 at Korn Ferry Tour Q-School to earn his 2023 card, then locked up PGA Tour status for 2024 with a 23rd-place finish on the Korn Ferry Tour points list. He won the Myrtle Beach Classic in 2024, the Genesis Scottish Open in 2025 and added the Sony Open in Hawaii and the WM Phoenix Open this season. He also climbed as high as No. 5 in the World Rankings, a marker that would have looked out of reach when he first arrived in Arizona with only a handful of professional starts behind him.
What has changed most, he said, is not just the ceiling. It is the floor. “Then to be able to play well and kind of climb my way up the ranks has been fun. Hard but fun at the same time,” Gotterup said. “I feel like, you know, my bad weeks have gotten a lot better, which is a good sign.”
That matters because the stretch after his WM Phoenix Open win has not been tidy. He shot rounds of 71 and 74 and missed the cut at The Genesis Invitational, even after a run that included two top-10 finishes, a T6 at the Texas Children's Houston Open and a T10 at the PGA Championship. He also finished T43 at the U.S. Open and T24 at The Masters, evidence that the ceiling remains high while the week-to-week shape is still settling.
So the return to TPC Deere Run is less a nostalgia trip than a checkpoint. The first time he came through here, he left believing he belonged. Now he returns as World No. 14, with proof that his good weeks can win anywhere and his bad ones no longer sink him as deeply. Gotterup said he will try to regain momentum at TPC Deere Run before defending his Genesis Scottish Open title, and that is the real measure of how far he has come: not whether he can flash once again, but whether he can keep the misses small enough for the wins to keep coming.
