PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Will Zalatoris started the PGA Tour’s 50-event super season on the Korn Ferry Tour.
He didn’t win a PGA Tour event in the 2020-21 campaign.
He didn’t get into the FedEx Cup Playoffs.
Yet he did something no one has done for 20 years.
Zalatoris will receive the Arnold Palmer Award as the PGA Tour’s Rookie of the Year for the 2020-21 season, it was announced Monday. As voted by his peers, Zalatoris becomes the first non-member of the PGA Tour to win the award since Charles Howell III did so in 2001.
Zalatoris, 25, who has full playing privileges for the upcoming season, is scheduled to play in this week’s Fortinet Championship in Napa, California, which kicks off the 2021-22 season.
“Will’s success despite not having PGA Tour membership status at the outset of the 2020-21 season is a testament to not only his ability but also his hard work and attitude,” PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said in a release.
While he didn’t win on the PGA Tour, he earned the award for his superb consistency and spectacular play at times. He made 21 of 25 cuts on the PGA Tour, the highlights being a runner-up finish in the Masters, where he fell one shot shy of Hideki Matsuyama, and seven other top-10s. Zalatoris rose to No. 31 in the Official World Golf Rankings, where he is currently ranked. Only five players had more top-10 finishes on the PGA Tour and Zalatoris finished 18th in scoring.
His playing status, however, was put off-kilter because of COVID-19, which wiped out three months of tournaments.
Zalatoris, who made 16 starts on the Korn Ferry Tour in 2020, where he won the TPC Colorado Championship and had 10 top-10s, earned Special Temporary status on the PGA Tour last November. This allowed him to accept an unlimited number of sponsor invites on the PGA Tour.
But the PGA Tour froze player status because of the global pandemic so current members at the time would not lose their cards. No one could be promoted from the Korn Ferry Tour without earning a battlefield promotion. Zalatoris accepted the Special Temporary status and moved on to the PGA Tour.
Because eligibility rules were altered because of the coronavirus, Zalatoris earned a trip to the 2020 U.S. Open and tied for sixth. His next three starts included a tie for eighth in the Corales Puntacana Championship and a tie for fifth in the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open.
While he banked roughly $4 million in combined earnings from both tours during the super season, he collected zero FedEx Cup points. While his non-member FedEx Cup total would have been 1,296 points, which would have ranked inside the top 30 when the playoffs started, he was stuck on zero without a win, which would have immediately made him a full member. Thus, he was unable to play in the playoffs. But his non-member points total earned his full playing status for this upcoming season.
Garrick Higgo, who won the Palmetto Championship at Congaree and is ranked No. 48 in the world, was the only other player on the ballot.