{"id":520120,"date":"2026-04-08T19:46:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T19:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/520120\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T19:46:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T19:46:09","slug":"meet-masters-dark-horse-who-cant-stop-crying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/520120\/","title":{"rendered":"meet Masters dark horse who can\u2019t stop crying"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rookies do not win the Masters<\/a>. That\u2019s the accepted\u00a0theory anyway. You have to go back to Fuzzy Zoeller in 1979 for the last man to win on his debut, but there are plenty of sages who believe it could be different this year, and Chris Gotterup could be the next. If he pulls it off then you can bet that it will end in tears.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For casual watchers, Gotterup may\u00a0be an unfamiliar name, but the man from New Jersey rose to No5 in the world rankings in February. Three wins in seven months \u2014 at the Scottish Open, Sony Open and Phoenix Open \u2014 showed that his big-hitting game is allied to the requisite mental toughness. And he was 13 under par for the final three rounds at Royal Portrush last July, finishing third in only his fourth major. <\/p>\n

He gets the New Jersey tropes thrown at him, with profiles referencing Tony Soprano and Bruce Springsteen, and he underscored\u00a0the links with a tattoo of his state\u2019s outline on his back. He is clearly different from the golfing norm and each of his wins has so far been marked by an emotional churn at the end. \u201cYou always make me cry,\u201d he told the interviewer Amanda Balionis.<\/p>\n

The thing is, Gotterup tells me he is not a crier. \u201cMy girlfriend said she had never seen me cry until I won,\u201d the 26-year-old says. \u201cI\u2019ve never cried watching a movie. I would not classify myself as emotional. I\u2019m even keel and flatline for the most part, but the way to describe it is you spend all day pushing your emotions away and trying not to let things get into your brain like, \u2018Holy crap, I might win this,\u2019 and then when it\u2019s time to let it in you can\u2019t control it. I think my brain has little flashbacks as well to the not-so-great days when you thought you couldn\u2019t do this. It\u2019s a feeling that\u2019s hard to replicate.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lows always elevate the highs in sport. Gotterup was an amateur\u00a0star at Rutgers University in New Brunswick but had hand surgery in 2020 and suffered another hand problem in 2024. His form went. A win at Myrtle Beach was followed by 15 missed cuts in 25 starts. \u201cIt took me a year after hand surgery to feel good again,\u201d of his college days. \u201cI went out and was shooting in the eighties. That was a tough one to overcome. <\/p>\n

\u201cAfter that it was off to the races but I struggled at the end of my rookie year too. So when I played at Pebble Beach and I was welcomed as the world No5, I was, \u2018Wow, that sounds made up.\u2019 And that\u2019s why golf is so crazy. All you have to do is get hot for three weeks and your world can change. That\u2019s why people chase it for as long as they do. It\u2019s an addiction. So if I win six more times I\u2019ll be happy to cry six more times.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gotterup has seen off some big names already, notably Rory McIlroy on the back nine at the Scottish Open. The partisan crowd was showing its tribal ties that day, and McIlroy tried to calm them to be fair to the American. He is grateful, but in keeping with his mental approach, makes little of it. \u201cThey obviously wanted Rory to win and I was doing everything I could to spoil that. It wasn\u2019t outrageous or anything and there was just a little crowd control at times.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the Phoenix Open, he birdied five of the last six holes to make the play-off, and he is blazing an inexorable path to major contention.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"GolferGotterup comes from a lacrosse backgroundTimes Photographer Bradley Ormesher<\/p>\n

He stands out in other ways. He has Danish grandparents and uses the Danish spelling of his name on his Instagram page. \u201cWhen we\u2019re at my grandma\u2019s house it\u2019s part of our life. She\u2019s got a very Danish accent and the food is definitely Danish. The Danes out here see the slash through my last name and say, \u2018You Danish?\u2019 It\u2019s a cool thing and I want to find out more about Denmark.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another way in which he bucks convention is that he hails from a lacrosse background which has led to him debating the relative violence of lacrosse and shinty with Bob MacIntyre. \u201cIf one\u2019s in a war, we\u2019re all in a war,\u201d was how MacIntyre once explained his love of Highlands stick and ball. <\/p>\n

\"AnGotterup\u2019s Masters invitation \u2014 he decided against watching the tournament last year as he only wanted to take it in as a player<\/p>\n

\u201cI played with him in the Bahamas, and him and his caddie were giving me the scoop about it,\u201d Gotterup says. \u201cIt\u2019s similar but not similar, but it sounded like it could be painful. Lacrosse is violent to a degree and it didn\u2019t hurt playing another sport. I\u2019m not going to attribute my success to lacrosse but it was helpful in terms of getting knocked down and being with people who might be better than you at something.\u201d<\/p>\n

He tells me one more story that may hint at a strength of desire and sense of occasion. It was last year\u2019s Masters and one of his sponsors was hosting a dinner. He made the trip to fulfil his duties and the top brass asked him if he wanted to go to watch the golf the following day. He thanked them but said he would skip it. \u201cI only wanted to go over there when I\u2019m playing it for real.\u201d He is the real deal. The crying game has rarely looked so good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rookies do not win the Masters. That\u2019s the accepted\u00a0theory anyway. You have to go back to Fuzzy Zoeller…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":520121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-520120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/520121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}