During the 2019 season—when the DP World Tour visited the Real Club Valderrama in Málaga, Spain—Detry and three other players took part in a challenge at the nearby Guadalmina course, where they each attempted to break the Guinness World Record for the fastest hole of golf. The standing record of 1 minute, 33.37 seconds, had been set on the same hole 14 months earlier.

Detry, then 26, was raring to go. It helped that he could first watch the attempts of his fellow competitors—Sean Crocker, Paul Dunne, and Guido Migliozzi—and learn from their mistakes. But the young Belgian pro had another advantage. Although he was first introduced to the sport of golf when he was five, Detry had a field hockey stick in his hands at an even younger age. In fact, he grew up playing several sports—field hockey, tennis, and cycling among them—and he continued to dabble in those pursuits for about a decade. In other words, he could run.

“Up until I was 14 or 15, I was doing everything,” he recalls. Yet, it was as a junior golfer where Detry showed the most promise, qualifying for the Belgian national team and subsequently traveling the world to play in a series of international events. “It became clear that I was just better at golf,” he says, “so I put the rest on the side.”

Detry wasn’t resting at Guadalmina, not once he put his tee shot in play and the clock began ticking. After hitting his drive with a smooth, relaxed swing—a strategic choice that saved him from running at full speed for more than 300 yards—Detry hustled after his shot, then knocked an iron just short of the green. Three putts later and Detry’s ball was in the hole. Moments later, as he was hunched over near the pin, he learned that he was a new Guinness World Record holder, having completed the 500-yard hole in 1 minute, 29 seconds. More than six years later, Detry’s record still stands.

From the moment he turned professional in 2016, Detry was effectively sprinting out of the gate. After finishing in the top 10 in his first two events on the European Challenge Tour—the equivalent of the Korn Ferry Tour for the DP World Tour—the University of Illinois alum was attracting attention. So much so that he signed a sponsorship deal with golf fashion brand G/Fore even before his first victory.

That maiden win wasn’t far behind; Detry effectively lapped the field in his 10th start as a pro, winning the Bridgestone Challenge in Oxfordshire, England, by a whopping 12 strokes. He next tasted victory two years later, teaming up with fellow countryman Thomas Peters for the ISPS Handa Melbourne World Cup of Golf.

On the PGA Tour, however, wins proved to be more elusive. In his first 67 starts, Detry made the cut 80 percent of the time, racking up two dozen top 25 finishes and nine top 10s. But it wasn’t until that fateful second week of February 2025 in Phoenix that the accomplished European player (ranked 49th in the world at the time this story went to press) put it all together for four straight days.

Ironically, it was Detry’s ability to slow down that week, to calm his mind, that allowed him to play his best—especially on Sunday. His performance validated almost two years of regular sessions with a sports psychologist and, at that time, more than half a year of regular mindset training using Headspace, a leading app for meditation and mindfulness.

“It’s not easy to get in that zone,” Detry acknowledges, “but you reach it when you have a free mind—when you don’t see all the mistakes that could potentially happen. When your brain is focused in the present and only on the shot that you want to hit.

“There are always moments where those negative thoughts sort of creep in,” he continues, “but I really felt like that was the best week that I’ve ever had in having a positive mindset. I was in the zone. You sort of have to be, because you’ve got 250,000 people shouting at you at the same time.”

Detry was so locked in for the Phoenix Open’s final round that even when he was stringing together multiple birdies across the closing stretch of holes, he was oblivious to the lead that he had accumulated. That was when his caddie, Lee Warne, stepped in.

About a decade earlier, when Warne was caddying in the Dunhill Links, he had the opportunity to chat with Steven Redgrave, one of Great Britain’s most decorated rowers, who was participating in the pro-am portion of the event. When he asked Redgrave to share his biggest regrets as an athlete, the gold medalist bluntly declared, “Not soaking it in and enjoying the moment.”

“It’s always stuck in my mind,” Warne says. “So, once we hit it just short of the green on 17, and [Detry] made birdie, I was like, now’s the time to enjoy this moment.”

So as the duo walked up the 18th fairway of the Stadium Course at TPC Scottsdale, the veteran looper tapped Detry on the shoulder and effectively said as much. “He said, ‘Let’s just enjoy this walk, because it doesn’t come along that often,’” Detry remembers.

“You dream about getting yourself in those situations, but it’s stressful,” Warne explains. “And when you’ve got a big lead like that, it’s almost like you try and chase the end too quick.”

In fact, as Warne sees it, that never-ending chase largely defines the professional golfer’s experience these days, especially at the highest level of competition. “There’s so much golf on the PGA Tour now,” he says. “Everyone just wins and then goes onto the next week. There’s never really time to actually stop, have a glass of red wine, and celebrate. You’re just caught up in the race all the time.”

That was precisely what happened to Detry earlier this year.

With a signature event scheduled for the week after the Phoenix Open, the newly crowned champ couldn’t take a week off. And because he and his wife, Sarah, chose to stay in the U.S. for the first half of the year with their two young daughters—rather than trying to fly back to their home in London or their other part-time residence in Dubai—Detry was always focused on the next tour stop on the calendar. It wasn’t until the final week of June, more than four months after his win, that he returned home for some much-needed time off.

Prior to that, the impact of the win hit the Belgian golfer in ways he hadn’t anticipated. “Because I’ve been so obsessed with winning golf tournaments, after the win I felt a bit of an empty space,” he shares. “Suddenly, I achieved a goal that was so big, and I was a little bit lost. I didn’t really know what my next goal was.”

Life for a professional golfer on the PGA Tour can be tough. This much Detry has learned over the past few years. Even after a win, the tour experience feels very much the same. “You’re almost disappointed every single week,” he reveals. “Obviously, the one odd week when you win, that’s when you feel really good about yourself. But it’s so competitive. You can pretty much never relax. It feels like every single week is such a grind to chase something better.”

Fortunately, Detry is well prepared for that. He’s been running hard his whole life.