Will Zalatoris Has Withdrawn From the 2023 Masters — What Happened?

The 2023 Masters are in full swing, and the competition is heating up! With the second round imminent, three players are sharing the top spot on the leaderboard: Viktor Hovland, Brooks Koepka, and Jon Rahm. As we prepare to see who will take the lead, we can't help but think about the two who withdrew from the tournament: Will Zalatoris and Kevin Na.

What happened? Why did Zalatoris and Na withdraw from the 2023 Masters? Keep reading to find out.

According to an official Masters press release, Will Zalatoris withdrew from the 2023 Masters due to injury shortly before his tee time on Thursday, April 6. The 26-year-old pro golfer's coach, Josh Gregory, revealed that Will woke up with tightness which never improved. When asked if he was OK, Will said, "No, I'm actually not."

Eventually, the former Wake Forest athlete and his coach decided to be cautious and withdraw because, let's face it — he's young, so he'll have plenty more opportunities to compete at the Masters in the future.

According to Sports Illustrated, Zalatoris recently spoke about a lingering injury, which stemmed from limited mobility in his right ankle. He was confident that he'd seen significant progress, but sadly, that wasn't the case.

"I had two herniated disks, and part of it was actually — the genesis of it was actually bad right ankle mobility. Because of me not pushing off my right side soon enough and being a very kind of dynamic player with some side bend, my right hip got high and tilt back," he said. "We've been trying to get me actually to stand closer to the golf ball, so that makes me create space with the ball so I can turn more horizontal as opposed to lateral. It's been good."

After completing nine holes of his first round, LIV Golf member Kevin Na withdrew from the 2023 Masters due to an undisclosed illness. He got off to a less-than-ideal start with a double-bogey on his opening hole — Kevin recorded four more bogeys the rest of the way and went on to shoot a 4-over 40.

Kevin Na teed off in the first group with 2003 Masters champion Mike Weir. Mike finished the round as a single player, later noting via ESPN that he couldn't "remember the last time I played as a single. I'm sure at some point in my career I probably did, but I am struggling to find my memory bank where it was. So that was a strange back nine."

Mike added that Kevin told him at the turn that he was withdrawing from the tournament: "Right there on 10 tee," he recalled. "But he said earlier he wasn't feeling well. So I'm not sure what's happening, but he told me earlier he wasn't feeling well."