The Brothers Fitzpatrick, the problem with pairs and Dye’s 18th: 10 things for the Zurich Classic

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[Photo: Ross Kinnaird]

Golfpocalypse is a collection of words that runs prior to each week’s PGA Tour event, mostly ABOUT that event. Reach out with your hottest takes on absolutely anything at [email protected]. We’ll publish the best emails here.

I’m pleased to let you know that Sunday’s action at Harbour Town this past weekend proved me 100% right in my take that it’s smart to have a signature event after the Masters. In fact, the climax of the RBC Heritage was undoubtedly better than what we saw on the back nine at Augusta, even if it lacked the same prestige.

The dream if you’re a PGA Tour exec is that a chunk of those 20 million people who tuned in for at least part of Rory’s win will come back the next week, and if they do, you want them watching Fitzpatrick and Scheffler fighting it out in the final group … and not Brian Campbell defeating Kevin Roy while the plaid yacht people on the other side of the ropes guzzle enough transfusions to make it seem entertaining (roughly nine transfusions). It worked last year, when we got a Justin Thomas win as the encore act to Rory’s drought-breaking Masters win and the best ratings since 2002, and without seeing ratings for this weekend yet, I bet they got pretty close to those numbers again.

Anyway, it’s good to be right. Let’s see if we can do it again this week, as we swing down south to the Zurich Classic and the only team event on the tour schedule.

1. I’m not so sure the Zurich is working

In theory, mind you, I love a good format change-up, and I’m still in mourning over the loss of the Match Play in Austin and eagerly awaiting the Rolapp-era match-play tour finale, hopefully in 2027. I should love the fourball-alt-shot style of the Zurich team event, and it’s definitely a creative solution to juicing up a tournament that would otherwise fall into the Cognizant dead zone, sitting as it does after a major and signature event and just before another signature-signature-major stretch. It is extremely skippable, so you might as well throw a few curveballs and hope something works.

The problem is, why should we care about teams? Is it actually that fun? It had its peak when Shane Lowry and Rory McIlroy won in 2024, but that always looked like a one-off, and sure enough, Rory peaced out this year. With only two players in the OWGR top 30 playing this time (Matt Fitzpatrick, joining his brother, and Ben Griffin, the defending champ once again partnering with Andrew Novak), it’s hard to summon up the usual enthusiasm, pairs novelty notwithstanding. There’s part of me that’s fascinated with alternate-shot strategy in particular on Sunday, but even then, the fascination is about 3% of what I feel at a Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup.

I don’t think I’m alone, and my not-so-novel take is that even with the change-of-pace format, this feels very much like a tournament that belongs in the dead zone that Rolapp wants to excise when he reduces the number of tournaments. I was sad reading the news about the end of the Hawaii swing, but if the reaper’s scythe comes for Zurich next year, I think the general reaction will be more like a shrug.

2. Now that I’ve Debbie Downer’ed it, here are my ten most fun groups

Hey, we’re still golf lunatics, right?? We’re still going to watch! So let’s rank the ten most fun groups, counting them down:

Ben Griffin and Andrew Novak – Okay, fine, defending champs. I do this reluctantly.

Jason Dufner and Austin Cook – Have you ever been whale watching? It’s something you do rarely in life, it mostly doesn’t go how you want, but you still can’t help believing that at any moment, something majestic is going to break through the surface. This is my closest comp for the Jason Dufner experience in 2026.

Joel Dahmen and Kevin Streelman – I want a 5,000-word oral history on how these two got paired together.

Nick Watney and Charley Hoffman – This is like a movie about two journeymen troubadours getting the band back together for one last gig. Nobody believes in them!

Christo Lamprecht and Neil Shipley – Extremely tall man, extremely jovial, rounder man. Good combo.

Billy Horschel and Tom Hoge – This is purely for Billy.

Blades Brown and Luke Clanton – Young blood! Future Ryder Cup stars, maybe, and by future Ryder Cup stars I, of course, mean future fodder for the European meat grinder.

Ryan Gerard and Sudarshan Yellamaraju – We’re still not talking enough about how bizarre and cool Yellamaraju’s origin story is.

The Brothers Fitzpatrick – I’m fully Fitzpatrick-pilled, which I’ll explain later … and by that I mean Matt, but I’m willing to carry Alex along for the ride.

Shane Lowry and Brooks Koepka – Pretty good substitute for Rory! There’s at least a 1% chance they could become idiosyncratic best friends, which makes Rory jealous and leads to a Ryder Cup soap opera in Ireland next year. On a serious note, this tournament could be huge for Koepka—a win here, and he gains access to a slew of signature events across the summer, and potentially vaults him into the top 30, in position to make the Tour Championship.

3. Hole of the Week

Max Greyserman called TPC Louisiana the most underrated course on tour, citing Pete Dye’s ability to force you to work the ball in multiple directions—he didn’t mention that, like Harbour Town, it’s more fodder for the railway plank lovers among us—and for the most fun hole I don’t think we have to look past the signature 18th, a 585-yard swamp beast with water along the entire right side. You can watch a flyover of the whole course here, with 18 starting at around the 7:50 mark, and in particular, I enjoy the nasty bunker on the left that makes things tough even when the pin isn’t tucked by the water. And if the Texas Open taught us anything, it’s that you can have a lot of fun with a super-long par-5 on the final hole. If you believe, like me, that they’re never actually going to roll the ball back, it’s time to start building some 600+ yard behemoths. This one comes close.

4. Rolapp Request of the Week: More singular geography-pinned courses on tour

This is admittedly a bit of a weird one, but look at that flyover video above again—you could have no knowledge of this course or the tour schedule, and if I showed you this video, you would just know it’s in Louisiana. I love a good bit of distinct geographical terrain in golf like nothing else—a few that come to mind are the Sandhills of North Carolina that are instantly recognizable at Pinehurst, the crooked cypresses and seaside cliffs that make Pebble unmistakable, the low sprawling live oaks with Spanish moss that tell you you’re on the Barrier Islands of Georgia when the RSM comes around, and obviously any UK links course. You could cite a dozen others, but there are too many plain-Jane courses that could basically be anywhere, and we need to either jazz those up with local geographical color or send them packing.

5. The Jordan Spieth Sadness Index (JSSI)

Raising it from a 4.7 to an 8.9. We are extremely sad at the T-33 finish in Hilton Head. Was it terrible? No. But after the ball-striking hype from Augusta, we had a right to expect more, and instead it’s just status quo middle of the pack existing simultaneously with insane volatility, and leading to tweets like this one from Justin Ray pointing out that he’s “the only player over the last 20 years on the PGA Tour to be under par, have 4+ doubles and 0 bogeys through 36 holes in any tournament.” The hope was always an illusion.

6. Will Marco Penge have an American breakthrough?

I’m not saying it will come at the Zurich—even if he won with Matt Wallace, it would be diluted by the pairs format—but I’m wondering in a larger sense if he’s got a surge in him. Last year, he was the darling of the DP World Tour, winning three times in Europe, but other than a T-4 at the Valspar, it’s been tough in his American campaign so far in 2026. It’s interesting to get a sense of his game through his stats, where he’s thriving off the tee (12th in SG: Off the Tee, sixth in distance), but pretty miserable with his irons and not so great with the putter either. I was excited to watch him this year, but right now he seems to be a one-trick pony, and the trick isn’t working well. I think he has more in him, but I’d like to see it soon if he’s going to be the next English star.

7. One normie pick, one weird pick

I’m so mad I didn’t have the courage to make Fitzpatrick my normie pick last week—I took Scheffler—so I’m going go with my gut this week, ignoring the Brothers Fitzpatrick and Koepka/Lowry (Lowry hasn’t been at his best), and going with my heart: Yellamaraju and Gerard. For the weird pick, how can I go with anyone but Lamprecht and Shipley? Team Tall and Round, for the win.

8. Rogue Golf Take: Matt Fitzpatrick had the best response to the dumb fans at the Heritage

I’m like many, but not all of you, in that when I hear American fans cheer ‘U-S-A!’ at an individual stroke play event, I immediately think of them as dipshits. I believe I am correct in this take, but I also think you have to keep these things in context. Going full Bethpage is always bad, but a few rogue elements doing performative patriotism in Hilton Head isn’t that big a deal. I will happily judge them for it, but it’s not really crossing a line.

It definitely annoys European players, though, and I thought Fitzpatrick’s reaction was awesome. First off, he hit a brilliant shot in the playoff and won the tournament. Next, he just put one hand to his ear—”I can’t hear you now”—but without seeming overly upset about it. Just a quick sort of “what’s up now?” gesture, subtle but deadly. Then he struck the perfect tone in his presser, giving lip service to the crowds and even praising the atmosphere, but comparing his victory to winning a road match in soccer, and then reminding them of what happened at the Ryder Cup.

Just a total masterclass, and it made me like Fitzpatrick more than I already do. His game is also so impeccable right now—this is the best he’s ever been, and he needs to win a major to capitalize.

9. Golf Tweet of the Week

On that topic:

10. Rogue Non-Golf Take: The government should give everyone a pool

I just spent a weekend with friends in Charleston, and the AirBnB we rented had a giant pool. After we played golf on Friday, we spent hours in there, and it was the most relaxed I’ve felt in a decade. Absolutely nothing can go wrong in a pool; it’s paradise. I would live in a pool if society wouldn’t reject me for being ahead of my time. If I ever get shot to death, I hope I’m in a pool, because I won’t even be bothered. It got me thinking how much better life would be if I could just hop in a pool any old time I wanted. Now that my kids can swim, there’s no real obstacle to becoming a pool guy, other than lack of space, the fact that I’m too lazy to want to maintain it, and it’s too much money. We go to a pool at our community centre instead, and that’s fine, but frankly, I’m sick of other people getting to enjoy it alongside me. I believe the government should provide every citizen with a pool, free of charge, and also maintain it. Think of the job creation.