Pro golfers tend to camp in clusters. There’s a heavy collection around West Palm Beach, Florida, plus pockets in Scottsdale, Southern California, Las Vegas, and South Carolina. But North Texas pulls its weight thanks to our central location, international airport, and weather that allows for year-round practice. In and around Dallas, you’ll find some 20 PGA Tour pros, 16 LPGA Tour pros, and three players on LIV Golf, the deep-pocketed, Saudi-backed tour that has fractured the men’s game. Here are a dozen of the most notable.
Scottie Scheffler
PGA, age 27 | Ranked No. 1
From Dallas, lives in Dallas
UT alum, pro since 2018
$45,570,067 career earnings
He’s coming off a historically great 2023—posting the lowest scoring average in PGA Tour history, non-Tiger Woods division—and yet he must know it could’ve been better. He managed to rank 162nd on tour in strokes-gained putting, which is the only reason he didn’t win just about every tournament he entered. (He won twice.)
Celine Boutier
LPGA, age 30 | Ranked No. 3
From France, lives in Dallas
Duke alum, pro since 2017
$6,745,662 career earnings
She won four times in 2023, including lapping the field at July’s Evian Championship for her first major. She’s quickly becoming one of the—if not the—most decorated golfers ever from France, rocketing to third in the Women’s World Golf Rankings. Trinity Forest is her home base with heralded Spieth coach Cameron McCormick.
Minjee Lee
LPGA, age 27 | Ranked No. 5
From Australia, lives in Irving
Pro since 2015
$13,878,179 career earnings
Golf is an impossible game. And yet there are a few people on this earth who make it seem simple, whose swing looks like it will never result in a bad shot. That’s Minjee Lee. The Aussie has been one of the very best and most consistent women in the game for nearly a decade. She’s won 10 times in that span, including two majors.
Jordan Spieth
PGA, age 30 | Ranked No. 13
From Dallas, lives in Dallas
UT alum, pro since 2012
$61,747,504 career earnings
A fool’s errand is trying to predict whether Spieth will ever regain the form that made his case to be one of the best one or two players in the world. But smart money is on another major or two for the 30-year-old, who hasn’t won one since 2017. It’s all still there, and there’s not a bigger spectator thrill in golf than when it shows up.
Tom Kim
PGA, age 21 | Ranked No. 16
From South Korea, lives in Dallas
Pro since 2018
$11,182,438 career earnings
Young. Hungry. Hits it on a rope. Won twice before he could order a beer with dinner. Not afraid to scream at the top of his lungs when he drains a big putt, as the South Korea-born Kim did during the President’s Cup. Maybe more impressive: the new Dallas resident, still just 21 years old, has already babysat Jordan Spieth’s kids.
Yuka Saso
LPGA, age 22 | Ranked No. 26
From Japan, lives in Frisco
Pro since 2021
$4,159,460 career earnings
One of the best swings in golf is modeled after another. Do yourself a favor and YouTube Yuka Saso and Rory McIlroy side by side. The turn, the extension, the power, the finish: it’s all perfect. Saso has so far captured just one win on the LPGA Tour—a big one, the 2021 U.S. Women’s Open—but at just 22, the future figures to be bright.
Will Zalatoris
PGA, age 27 | Ranked No. 34
From Dallas, lives in Dallas
Wake Forest alum, pro since 2018
$16,384,404 career earnings
How could you not love the kid? Built like a toothpick, swings like a sequoia. (Putts like a lumberjack.) Some guys you believe won’t go to LIV because over there they’ll find no benchmark against which to measure their accomplishment, which after all is all they’re after. That is what we want to believe Willy Z is. So he’ll probably go.
Gee Chun
LPGA, age 29 | Ranked No. 42
From South Korea, lives in Irving
Pro since 2016
$8,002,972 career earnings
She took up golf at age 11 in South Korea and, when her parents’ restaurant fell on hard times, developed a dream to go pro to help. She did, winning three majors in her first four years on tour. A slump made her consider quitting the sport, but she broke out in 2022 with a stunning victory at the Women’s PGA Championship.
Pierceson Coody
PGA, age 24 | Ranked No. 169
From Plano, lives in Plano
UT alum, pro since 2022
$690,313 career earnings
He’s the former top-ranked amateur and the more promising of the current Coodys, who are grandsons of Masters champ Charles. Fun fact: during college at UT, he and identical twin, Parker—also a pro golfer—broke their right arms in the same way at the same time, bracing themselves on a wall after a friendly post-workout race.
Harry Higgs
PGA, age 32 | Ranked No. 437
From Kansas, lives in Dallas
SMU alum, pro since 2014
$5,102,393 career earnings
You’d be hard-pressed to find a single quote about The Big Rig that is not glowing. Over the last couple seasons, though, he’s been honest about the stresses that have come with a swing that won’t cooperate. He managed to regain conditional status on the PGA Tour in 2024, but it’ll be a fight to stick around again next year.
Bryson DeChambeau
LIV, age 30
From Modesto, California; lives in Dallas
SMU alum, pro since 2016
$27,479,287 PGA earnings, $125 million LIV contract
DeChambeau has shed some of his hothead-gym-bro persona and embraced a life of financial gainz. The villain role he’d fallen into seemed to have been wearing on him when he left the Tour in 2022 for a $125 million check from LIV Golf. But a slimmed down DeChambeau now appears poised for noise at the 2024 majors.
Carlos Ortiz
LIV, age 32
From Mexico, lives in Dallas
UNT alum, pro since 2013
$7,752,048 PGA earnings, LIV contract not reported
It was sad when the scrappy UNT grad with Spiethian mannerisms left for LIV. Even sadder: his recent comments on the Subpar podcast, where he admitted LIV players were told they would eventually get Official World Golf Ranking points. Sadly, OWGR points have not come. Without them, players like Ortiz won’t ever get to play the majors.
This story originally appeared in the April issue of D Magazine with the headline “Pro Swingers.” Write to [email protected].
