We would like to welcome Chris Gotterup into the interview room here at the Barbasol Championship 2022. Chris, you’re here via a great finish last week at the John Deere Classic and then you top-5, top-10 finish, gets you into this tournament. You’ve had a stellar college career at first Rutgers and then OU. You just won the Haskins Award and the Nicklaus Award. What’s that transition been like from college to the PGA Tour? You’ve played like I think four tournaments as a professional.
Chris: Yeah, it’s been crazy so far. I haven’t really — last two days I was home and that’s the first two days I’ve been home since New Years Eve or something like that. It honestly feels like just been going to college without my teammates, that’s all it is. I’ve got my buddy caddying for me, but other than that, it’s been like the process as usual.
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What’s been the most outstanding difference, though? Like playing on a team at college compared to coming out and being an individual on the professional tour, what has stood out to you as the biggest difference, do you think?
Chris: Just the individual part of it, like you’re just doing everything by yourself. So you’ve either got to figure it out, figure it out on your own or you’re going to get stuck out here just on a constant loop of being frustrated or whatnot. So I’ve just been working really hard on trying to find good time usage on the range and stuff like that. Yeah, just trying to use my time properly because once you get to Thursday, there’s not much of it.
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Has the transition been a little surprising for you with the success you’ve had or had you kind of anticipated or expected that to happen pretty quickly?
Chris: I would have thought my game would have translated pretty well to pro golf. Not that it’s — you know, golf’s golf, but I just think that my style of play fits kind of the PGA Tour pretty well. I don’t want to say I was expecting to come out here and, you know, go top-5 in the first couple weeks, but I was expecting to play well at some point, and
I’m happy to be in the position I am right now and hopefully can keep it going.
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This is a big opportunity this week. I just want to give an example, like Seamus Power won last year, it was his first victory and now he’s in the top-40 in the world playing at The Open Championship next week. Obviously a good performance here could get you into that tournament. How do you view this event sort of as a bonus being here, I guess?
Chris: For me in the position I’m in right now, each week that I’m playing, whether it’s Barbasol or whether it’s the biggest event I can play in at the moment, they’re all massive opportunities for me to kind of keep climbing the ladder a little bit. Obviously, like you said, Seamus goes and wins and he skyrockets to where he is now. I think it’s the same for every other person that’s playing this week, it’s a life-changing opportunity to play. Every
week, like last week was a huge moment for me in my career, so I think each week, as long as I can keep building on something, it will be meaningful.
Chris, a lot was made of the letter that you wrote to Clair Peterson (John Deere Classic) last week that earned you the invitation to play. Have you written other letters? What’s your sort of plan going forward? Have you received any other invites coming up?
Chris: Yeah, so when I went through that process, I wrote letters to all the events that I knew I had a chance to like play in schedule-wise. I just wrote what I thought would be helpful to them to get to know me and how I know that their event could help me out as well. So, yeah, I wrote all that. I’ve written follow-up letters to the events that are coming up after this as well. Yeah, I just kind of try to keep sticking my name out there. Obviously if you play well it helps as well, but yeah, I’ve just been trying to keep my name in the mix, for sure.
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Are you more of a goal-oriented type of person or are you the type that just comes out, sees what your game gives you and builds off of that?
Chris: Yeah, I don’t think I’m big in the expectations area because I struggle with, you know, if that’s all I’m thinking about, then I’m not focused on what I’ve got to do day-to-day basis-wise, so I try not to put too much on my plate, honestly.
