The inaugural $4 million Myrtle Beach Classic, and all the spoils that come with a PGA Tour victory, are Chris Gotterup’s to lose on Sunday.
The consensus No. 1 college golfer in 2022 at Oklahoma is seeking his first tour victory in his first full year on tour, and enters the final round with a four-shot lead at 18-under 195.
He shot a 6-under-par 65 in Saturday’s third round to extend a one-stroke lead to four over first-round co-leader Robert MacIntyre of Scotland, Erik van Rooyen of South Africa and Jorge Campillo of Spain.
Davis Thompson, 24, a two-time NCAA Regional individual winner at Georgia, is five shots back, 27-year-old Duke alumnus Alex Smalley is six back, and eight golfers are seven back.
So Gotterup is clearly in the driver’s seat to secure at minimum his short-term future in the game.
Though it’s an opposite field event being played concurrently with the more prestigious Wells Fargo Championship in Charlotte, a win still carries a lot of weight on tour.
The winner will receive $720,000, a two-year PGA Tour exemption through 2026, 300 FedExCup points, exemptions into next week’s PGA Championship and the 2025 season-opening The Sentry and Players Championship events. He’ll also be in a strong position to get into the final two $20 million Signature Events of the year.
The four-shot lead matches the largest 54-hole lead on tour this year held by both Jake Knapp at the Mexico Open at Vidanta and Akshay Bhatia at the Valero Texas Open, who both went on to win – Bhatia in a playoff and Knapp by two shots.
The final round begins at 6:50 a.m. Sunday and the final twosome of Gotterup and van Rooyen tees off at 12:45 p.m. Golf Channel will broadcast from 3-5 p.m.
Gotterup’s 36- and 54-hole leads at The Dunes Club are his first after any round on the PGA Tour in his 27th start, and he birdied two of the first three holes Saturday.
“I got off to a good start on the scorecard but definitely was a little shaky. I was feeling it,” he said. “I’ll be nervous, and I’ll be ready as I can be for tomorrow. . . . I practiced all those days at home for a day like tomorrow. It’s going to be hard. There’s a lot of good guys behind me. I’m going to have to bring it. But if I was here at the beginning of the week and you said this was going to happen, I’d be all in. I’m excited. It’s what I play the game for.”
Gotterup is one of the longest hitters on tour, and believes his length is a distinct advantage at particular places on the course.
“I think there’s some holes that I can get at that maybe other guys are questioning, bunkers coming in here and there,” he said. “I like the course.”
Working toward a win
Gotterup won the Haskins and Jack Nicklaus awards in 2022 while at Oklahoma, recognizing him as the top college golfer that year.
He enjoyed the benefits of his stellar amateur resume with seven sponsor exemptions in eight PGA Tour starts – not including his tie for 43rd in the U.S. Open – in 2022, but in the end he went the traditional route to the PGA Tour with a finish of 23rd on the 2023 Korn Ferry Tour money list following a full season on the feeder circuit.
“I left school with no status at all and played good and grinded it out,” said Gotterup, who had a pair of top-10s on sponsor exemptions in 2022. “I’ve kind of gone through the works of how you’re supposed to do it.”
He knows his capabilities, but he has been trying to remain patient while still learning at golf’s highest level.
“It’s been hard just because I’ve struggled with – and it sounds stupid – but the club didn’t feel good in my hands for a couple weeks, and you just kind of get on a bad run of maybe practicing too hard and stuff like that,” he said. “But I’ve worked hard these last couple weeks just not overdoing it and trying to simplify things.”
His top finish in 12 previous events this season is a tie for 11th at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans team event two weeks ago with partner Austin Eckroat.
That event sparked both Gotterup’s improved play and his mustache. Normally clean-shaven, he and Eckroat grew mustaches as a team-bonding exercise. If he wins Sunday, the stache will likely remain for awhile.
“Ever since Zurich I’ve been in a good mood. Just everything has been fun. Golf has been fun,” Gotterup said. “Honestly at Zurich I felt like things were starting to change just because I was playing with a buddy, playing with a good group of guys, and it was a fun week. Ever since then I feel like it’s just been a little bit easier.”
Being along the coast has made it easy for Gotterup to maintain his positive mindset. He said he spent some time walking along the beach on Saturday before his early-afternoon tee time.
“I like being by the beach. The weather has been good. It’s been good vibes this week,” Gotterup said. “. . . Obviously there was a great turnout today, too, with fans.”
Tournament officials reported an attendance of 15,281 fans Saturday, which is expected to be the largest crowd of the week.
Gotterup gave them something to cheer about with his tournament-leading 22nd birdie of the week with a 17-foot putt on the 18th hole to pad his lead. “That birdie on the last was huge,” he said.
Gotterup’s closest competitors
Gotterup will have the most accomplished PGA Tour player on the leaderboard alongside him Sunday.
van Rooyen has two PGA Tour wins, is the most recent winner in the field with a victory in November’s World Wide Technology Championship, and has the most 2024 FedExCup points in the field to rank 41st on tour this season.
He has six top-25 finishes in 12 starts in 2024 including a runner-up in the Cognizant Classic in the Palm Beaches in March and tie for eighth in the Mexico Open at Vidanta in late February. He is one of 13 players in the field already exempt for the PGA Championship.
van Rooyen has been on the cusp of what every player in the Myrtle Beach field craves – exemptions into the lucrative Signature Events and majors, and the stability that comes with them.
“It’s so tricky with the category I’m in. I’ve got to play my way into these elevated events, and I’ve been lucky enough to do so,” van Rooyen said. “I’ve played a lot of golf leading up to the elevated events, and then all of a sudden you get in and it’s like you’ve got to continue playing and then you’ve got the majors coming.
“I was sort of on the cusp of getting into Wells Fargo, and the decision was do I play Byron Nelson or rest and catch up on some sleep. So I took it off and obviously didn’t sneak into Wells, but what a place this is. It’s a fantastic golf course.”
van Rooyen finished his round by holing a 44-foot birdie putt that ultimately got him into Sunday’s final twosome. He made 167 feet of putts Saturday, giving him more than 400 feet of putts made in 54 holes. “Putting has been great all week,” he said.
Though he has yet to win as a PGA Tour rookie, MacIntyre, 27, has a pair of DP World Tour victories and played on the victorious 2023 European Ryder Cup Team.
Campillo, 37, has three top-25 finishes in nine starts in his rookie season, having earned PGA Tour status via the DP World Tour top 10 in 2023.
He birdied the final three holes to pull into contention, and it was all ball-striking, as 4 feet was his longest birdie putt on the closing par-3 and par-4 holes. He set up the closing 4-foot birdie putt with a shot from the left pinestraw, hooking the shot left around an oak tree and under an oak tree limb.
“It was the best shot I’ve hit in my life,” Campillo said. “I was aiming to the right of the right bleachers. . . . It was a good finish, great way to finish, actually.”
Though he made a 32-foot eagle putt on the fourth hole and a 17-foot birdie putt, Campillo missed putts of 3 and 4 feet Saturday that would have pulled him within two shots to the lead.
“There’s still 18 holes to go,” Campillo said. “It’s never easy to win a golf tournament, and I like my chances. Obviously I have to play great. I cannot make any mistakes, and I have to keep playing like this.
“I just come here and enjoy the experience really, have fun, really didn’t think about anything else. I never think about keeping my card, winning tournaments, nothing. Just try to enjoy the experience, and so far, so good.”
