A bulked-up Will Zalatoris got his 2025 PGA Tour season off to a hot start on Thursday at the Sentry. But the 28-year-old gave more credit for his opening 65 at Kapalua’s Plantation Course to the work he’s done on the practice range than the work he’s done in the gym.

Following the round, Zalatoris said, “That was probably the best from 10 to 25 feet maybe ever. It’s a nice way to start the year.” And the stats back it up.

RELATED: The Sentry prize money payout for every golfer in Hawaii

Zalatoris, not exactly known for his work with the flatstick—or, the broomstick, in his case—ranked third in the elite field in strokes gained putting. And he made eight birdies and no birdies as he trails leader Tom Hoge by one shot after Day 1 in the PGA Tour’s season opener.

“I mean, it’s cleaned up everything inside of 10 feet, which obviously was usually my bugaboo, but I felt like I needed to make more 10 to 25 footers,” Zalatoris said of switching to the broomstick putter ahead of last season. “So we made some really hard drills, Josh Gregory and I, and I wasn’t leaving each day until I completed ’em especially from the 10 to 25 foot range.”

And what exactly were those “hard drills” that Zalatoris had to complete?

“So, 30 putts, five 10-footers, five 12-footers, five 15, five 17, five 20 and I got to make nine out of 30, and do it until you complete it,” Zalatoris said. “So it’s basically, like the drills that we do, you look at the strokes gained average from those distances and then maybe try to raise it, maybe try to get to strokes gained plus 1, which make it’s that much harder, especially if you’re doing it on a practice green that I know. Obviously it paid off today.”

Indeed, it did, but NINE out of 30 from over 10 feet? That seems like it would take the average weekend hacker longer to complete than Barstool’s Jersey Jerry making a hole-in-one. Either time.

Anyway, it’s clearly working for Will. But if you want to try it at home, you better leave yourself a LOT of time.

RELATED: Akshay Bhatia on Phil Mickelson’s ‘mind-blowing’ Masters notebook

This article was originally published on golfdigest.com