[PHOTO: Oisin Keniry/R&A]
The problem with keeping statistics in painstaking detail, as Matt Fitzpatrick does, is that they can tell some pretty ugly stories. The man who documents every competitive shot he’s ever taken, not to mention countless other data points, calculated this week at The Open that the northern spring of 2025 might have marked the worst run of his career. An ugly 78 in his opening round at the Players, followed by a Thursday 76 at the Texas Open, brought him to the nadir, and he had very little idea of where the ball would go after any given swing.
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Four months later, the situation could not be more different. After holing a 23-footer on the 18th hole to complete a second-round, five-under 66, the 2022 US Open champion moved to nine-under and sits second in the Open Championship, one shot behind world No.1 Scottie Scheffler, with whom he’ll share the last tee-time tonight (Australian time).
Four months may not sound like a long time, particularly in golf, but for Fitzpatrick the turnaround has been a long time coming, perhaps as long as two years after a rough 2024. He opted to leave his caddie, Billy Foster, and he has a new coach in Mark Blackburn. With consecutive top-10 finishes among strong fields in his past two starts, Fitzpatrick, 30, is threatening to return to major-championship form.
Which is exactly what he’s thinking about.
“Giving myself an opportunity to win the golf tournament, but there’s still a hell of a long way to go,” he said after his second competitive lap of the Dunluce links at Royal Portrush. “Obviously the aim of the game is to stay in it for as long as possible and hopefully you can pull away right at the death. I’m obviously 50 percent there. We’ll see what the weekend brings.”
Everything worked for Fitzpatrick on Friday, but on the front nine, it was his putter that was perhaps hottest, with three birdie putts longer than 10 feet dropping. Two bogeys limited him to a 34, but that’s when he went on his hottest streak of the day, making four straight birdies starting at the 10th, where he rolled in a 13-footer and then proceeded to stick three straight approaches inside seven feet. The hot streak ended with a bogey on 14, and he missed a terrific birdie opportunity at 17 when he blundered a three-footer for birdie, but his 66, after an opening 67, was enough to give him the lead.
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Unfortunately, it only lasted a moment, and there’s the rub – Saturday, he’s got to face more than just the course. Waiting in the final partnership is Scheffler, looking to add the third leg of the career Grand Slam, and the Texan is coming off a 64 that saw him have a birdie putt on 18 to tie the new course record set by Shane Lowry in 2019. That’s a scary proposition for anyone, much less for Fitzpatrick, who is experiencing the pressures of contention for the first time in a while. After the round, he attempted to defuse that prospect by turning the narrative around on Scheffler.
“I wouldn’t say I necessarily feel as much pressure,” he said. “The pressure, he’s going to have the expectation to go out and dominate. He’s an exceptional player. He’s world No.1, and we’re seeing Tiger-like stuff. I think the pressure is for him to win the golf tournament. For me obviously I hope I’m going to have some more home support than him, but it’s an exciting position for me to be in given where I was earlier this year.”
“There’s nothing better than being in contention,” Fitzpatrick added. “It feels a bit uncomfortable at the time, but that’s what you’re searching for. You want to feel that. It means you’re doing something right for the most part.”
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And perhaps luck is on his side too. On Thursday, in an impossible position down the dune ridge on the long par-3 16th, Fitzpatrick somehow managed to hole out (on the fly!) for birdie. A day later on the home hole, after a pulled approach left him facing a low percentage up-and-down, he buried a 23-footer to stay at nine-under.
If that’s the case, he has a bit of luck coming; it’s been a tough dry spell for the former US Open champion, and he’ll probably need more of it if he wants to reach the summit of the mountaintop again.
