LOS ANGELES \u2013 As his offseason wound down, Aldrich Potgieter texted his agent and said, \u201cWait until you see the new me.\u201d<\/p>\n
He wasn\u2019t kidding.<\/p>\n
After several months overhauling his training and diet, the 21-year-old, hard-hitting South African is down about 35 pounds from where he ended last season. He\u2019s hovering right above 200 pounds, and the difference is immediately recognizable.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got in a nice system where I can kind of grind on some things that you can\u2019t really do when you\u2019re out here,\u201d said Potgieter, who now works with renown trainer Marnus Marais, whose exclusive list of clientele includes world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler.<\/a> \u201cAnd being on the Tour for three years now and away from home, you get in some bad habits, and it just builds up over time. So, I think having some two months off to work on some things were good.\u201d<\/p>\n Potgieter\u2019s offseason included other changes, including new management (Entertainment Sports Partners), equipment (PXG) and apparel (also PXG). Though the weight loss went quick, Potgieter has been slower to adjust with the clubs.<\/p>\n He is still very long, ranking third on Tour, but entered this week\u2019s Genesis Invitational<\/a> ranked outside the top 130 in strokes gained approach, around the green and putting. <\/p>\n That contributed to Potgieter missing cuts at the American Express,<\/a> Farmers Insurance Open<\/a> and WM Phoenix Open<\/a> before tying for 60th against a limited field at Pebble Beach<\/a>.<\/p>\n Perhaps it\u2019s starting to all come together at Riviera, where Potgieter has fired back-to-back, 3-under 68s to sit in contention entering the weekend for the first time since winning the Rocket Classic last July.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of change,\u201d Potgieter said, \u201cand I think we picked up a little few things that changed with my posture and how I\u2019m setting up to the ball. Lost some weight, so I think that kind of played a bit of a factor. So, when we figured that out, it was a little bit better.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES \u2013 As his offseason wound down, Aldrich Potgieter texted his agent and said, \u201cWait until you…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480993,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-480992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}