Chris Gotterup, the pride of Little Silver, New Jersey and Rutgers University, has announced his arrival on the world stage. An overnight sensation a quarter century in the making, his name is now plastered across sports pages and websites throughout America and the UK. It's not a stretch to say that Gotterup might be on a path to becoming a household name alongside the likes of Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy.
 
In a blur of consecutive PGA Tour events contested in Europe in July, Gotterup transformed himself from virtual unknown to international fame. The Rutgers graduate, former All-American and golf's national collegiate player of the year quickly became the talk of the entire golfing community. In the ensuing weeks, he has gone on to qualify for the final and most prestigious of the three-tournament Fedex Cup Series - the 30-man, season-ending Tour Championship, to be contested Aug. 21-24 at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, Georgia.
 
He's charting a supersonic trajectory, one that with a victory or a high finish this week may carry the freakishly-long Gotterup to inclusion on the 12-man U.S. team in the upcoming 2025 Ryder Cup Matches at Long Island's Bethpage Black in September.
 
On July 14, Gotterup found himself competing alongside McIlroy, a proud Irishman and international icon, recent Grand Slam champion, and a hero to all of Europe's sporting public. In Sunday's final round, Gotterup not only stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the world's No. 2-ranked player, he beat him and the rest of the field in securing the Genesis Scottish Open Championship. With a throng of fans openly rooting against him and for Rory, Gotterup withstood the test, finishing at 15-under par, two strokes ahead of McIlroy and Marco Penge.
 
The Jersey Shore product then carried that momentum over to the following week at The Open Championship, at Northern Ireland's Royal Portrush Golf Club, where he finished in third place, five strokes behind the champion, Scheffler.
 
Gotterup now enters the Tour Championship with an Official World Golf Ranking of 27 (he was ranked No. 158 heading into the Scottish Open), and has eclipsed the 4-million dollar mark for the season, good for 31st on the PGA Tour. The Tour Championship carries with it a $40 million purse, with the winner set to take home a cool $10 million. Gotterup, whose first PGA Tour win came at the 2024 Myrtle Beach Classic, will now tee it up in the 2026 Masters, as well as golf's three other major championships and enjoys a full two-year PGA Tour exemption. 
 
Finally able to take a short-lived deep breath, Gotterup recently spoke with scarletknights.com about, the two weeks that were, his meteoric career arc, and the role his experiences at Rutgers University have played in his success.
 
"I don't really know how to describe it. It's been crazy in terms of the recognition with everyone saying congrats and what not," Gotterup said. "But, I've been so busy playing too. It was an amazing Sunday winning the Scottish Open and obviously carrying over to the next week but it really all went so fast and I was on to the next tournament so quickly that I really haven't been sitting there and taking it all in."
 
On playing in the final group with McIlroy, and beating him on European soil in front of "his" people," Gotterup said. "I mean, it's hectic. It just gave me an appreciation for the Tigers, the Scotties, the Rorys of the world, that they're able to put up with that week in and week out and really do a great job.
 
"There's so many people out there and they're moving all over the place. In my case, there were many people openly rooting against me for obvious reasons being that we were in Europe," he continued. "It was also cool though because I grew up watching Rory. I know what he's capable of and I also knew what I was capable of. So, it was really fun to stand up there and go toe to toe with him."
 
Gotterup arrived at Rutgers in the fall of 2017 a raw, long-hitter who had excelled in high school largely due to his natural talent and an athletic ability largely honed by also being a top lacrosse player. To say he basically coasted through high school golf would be an accurate statement.
 
It wasn't really until he got to college that Gotterup, in his words, "I finally kind of started to figure it out."
 
Most PGA Tour players were nationally-rated high school stars, recruited by dozens of top programs who play in year-round warm conditions, think the likes of Stanford, Arizona State and Georgia. Not for Gotterup, who only had a handful of college suitors. In fact, the only other school besides Rutgers he remembers showing any interest was Loyola of Maryland. Translating his prodigious, yet largely untapped talent, into collegiate success was a bumpy ride for Gotterup who eventually became the Big Ten Player of the Year.
 
"I think I probably went into school thinking that I'm going to be the man and I was definitely not the man my freshman year," he said. "I got yelled at plenty of times. I didn't live up to expectations my freshman year and I had some really tough times on the course. But I still enjoyed it. I knew it was going to be a learning process. It wasn't like, 'ok, I'm going to play professionally. I just tried to get better, tried to help the team as best as I could. And pass my classes."
 
How cool is it that this potential sports superstar once roamed the same streets and hallways that Rutgers graduates came to know during their time on campus? His freshman dorm was Tinsley Hall, just a stone's throw from Brower Commons and across the street from the Student Center. During his final three years at RU, Gotterup lived with teammates in a house on Duke Street. Classrooms like Scott Hall and Murray Hall roll off his tongue easily, as do locales such as SHI Stadium and Jersey Mike's Arena.
 
In a recent interview on PGA Tour Radio, the interviewer tried to steer the conversation to Oklahoma Sooner football before Gotterup quickly flipped the narrative to Scarlet Knight football. "I was playing with some guys from Oregon, like Wyndham Clark, and we're talking about maybe going to the RU-Oregon game this fall," he said.
 
Gotterup said he finds that many of his peers on the PGA Tour have few good things to say about their collegiate alma maters and don't maintain many ties with them. That couldn't be further from the case for Gotterup, who still maintains friendships with several of his former professors and academic tutors.
 
And he remains tight with the Scarlet Knight coaching staff, especially head coach Rob Shutte "I definitely wouldn't be where I am today without Rutgers and coach," he said. "I definitely needed some hard coaching and I got it."
 
For his part, Shutte, who will enter his 15th year as RU head coach this fall, says, "I think we were certainly the right coaching staff at the right time for Chris, but make no mistake, he's the one who put in all of the hard work. We knew he was athletic when we recruited him as he had a long background playing lacrosse. We like to recruit athletes into our program, not just golfers and Chris was certainly that. Also, something that gets lost sometimes on telecasts is just what a great pair of hands he has on and around the greens. He has great natural touch with his wedges and his putter. This talent had to be honed for sure and again, over his four years, he put the work in.
 
"Chris is the type of person who likes to prove people wrong," Shutte continued. "He's always had a reputation for hitting it long but he knew that in order to succeed on the world stage, he needed to turn his weaknesses into strengths. And he's done just that. He's put in the work in the weight room, obviously in practice and on the course. He's just so much more mature, the way he walks, the way he carries himself, and the way he handles the media in interviews."
 
On what it means to have helped produce a world-class player of Gotterup's stature, the RU head coach quipped, "it sure doesn't hurt in recruiting. With all the improvements we've made in our program in recent years, from the training facilities and aids that our players now enjoy, of course being a member of the Big Ten Conference, having Chris as an ambassador for Rutgers and the men's golf program is certainly tremendous."
 
"Chris and I have grown so close, both over his four years here and in the years since. It sounds funny to say, because I'm not his father by a long shot, he already has a great one (Morton Gotterup, who's also been a top amateur in the state for decades) but he does almost feel like a son to me in some ways. We've got three kids at home but it's almost like Chris is my fourth. I couldn't be more proud of him and happier for the success he's had and what is sure to come in the future."
 

A recipient of seven NJ Press Association Awards for writing excellence, John Beisser ('86) served as Assistant Director in the Rutgers University Athletic Communications Office from 1991-2006, where he primarily handled sports information/media relations duties for the Scarlet Knight football and men's basketball programs. In this role, he served as managing editor for nine publications that received either National or Regional citations from the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA). While an undergraduate at RU, Beisser was sports director of WRSU-FM and a sportswriter/columnist for The Daily Targum. From 2007-2019, Beisser served as Assistant Athletic Director/Sports Media Relations at Wagner College, where he was the recipient of the 2019 Met Basketball Writers Association "Good Guy" Award. Beisser resides in Piscataway with his wife Aileen (RC '95,) a four-year Scarlet Knight women's lacrosse letterwinner, and their 16-year old daughter Riley.