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WATCH: Will Zalatoris Invokes Warriors’ Steph Curry After Clutch Putt on 18
Ever since Scottie Scheffler won his first PGA Tour event in February, Will Zalatoris took the “honor” of golfer most likely to get his first win.
Zalatoris, playing in his first FedEx Cup playoff, had been tantalizingly close before this weekend, including playoff losses at Torrey Pines and the PGA Championship and a runner-up at the U.S. Open. Each of those defeats saw Zalatoris miss key mid-range putts.
On Sunday, however, Zalatoris nailed three putts between 7 and 13 feet down the stretch to beat Sepp Straka in a playoff to win the FedEx St. Jude Championship at TPC Southwind in Memphis.
On the 72nd hole, Zalatoris needed this 10-footer for par to send it to a playoff.
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After exorcising his putting demons, Zaltoris yelled, “What are they going to say now?”
It was an ode to Golden State Warriors star Steph Curry, who said the same thing after he returned from a couple of injury-plagued seasons to win the NBA Finals this past June.
“I did say that,” Zalatoris, a Bay Area native, said after the win. “Yeah, you know, I’m a big Warriors fan and obviously Steph, he’s a Cal Club guy, he’s a pretty big inspiration obviously. I follow the Warriors like crazy and when he said that, it kind of related to kind of my journey so far. So being that close and then kind of being written off here and there and then obviously finally pulling off, it was – I actually can’t believe I said that actually.”
With the win, Zalatoris has put himself in position to be a world champ just like Curry because he now leads the FedEx Cup standings by 135 points over Scheffler.
Next week’s BMW Championship is the second of two playoff events before the season-ending Tour Championship in two weeks.
