[PHOTOS: Getty Images]
A mid-afternoon sun was pouring down and the warmth was especially gratifying to Russell and Susan Fitzpatrick. Validation, perhaps, for having chosen wisely some 23 years ago to spend their holiday getaways at Hilton Head Island in South Carolina.
“We enjoyed it the first time we visited, in 2000,” said Russell. His wife agreed and while their boys, Matt and Alex, were not of the proper voting age, Russell and Susan served as proxies and made it a unanimous decision. Hilton Head Island, specifically the Sea Pines Resort with its heralded Harbour Town Golf Links, would be a destination about a dozen times in coming years for this proper English family from Sheffield.
So when Matt Fitzpatrick, now 28 and fully grown into the professional golfer he’s always wanted to be, had defeated Jordan Spieth in April on the second hole of a playoff to win the 2023 RBC Heritage Classic in front of his mother and father and tens of thousands of holiday visitors, he measured the emotions in ways that were personal.
Assuredly, the $US3.6 million prize factored in somewhere – no one would carelessly dismiss such a sum – but first things first. “I think I can retire now,” laughed Fitzpatrick. “(Beyond the majors) there isn’t a higher one than this on my list to win. That’s the truth. This place is just a special place and it means the world to have won it.”
He had first seen the Sea Pines Resort as a 5-year-old and now he was the sixth-ranked golfer on the planet. Surreal, all of it, a point that Russell Fitzpatrick had made just one day earlier.
Bouncing back and forth between questions about Matt and Alex, now a first-year professional who is on the DP World Tour’s minor-league circuit, the Challenge Tour, Russell at one juncture talked about anxiousness that he had.
“As a parent, you’re always worried for them. The game is so up-and-down,” he said.
So, he was nervous going into round four of the RBC Heritage? Russell Fitzpatrick briskly shook his head. “No, not for Matt. Sue and I are going through the emotions for Alex, who is in Europe right now. The game is so hard. But no nerves for Matt. He is fine.”
Bloody hell, he is so right. Matt Fitzpatrick is quite fine, thank you very much. With the RBC Heritage being his ninth win – seven of them on the DP World Tour – the young man who still looks like the college student he was for one semester in 2014 is growing into a force. Do the maths. It’s his ninth season, he’s got nine wins, and that’s a ratio that puts Fitzpatrick among the elite.
No surprise to his veteran caddie, either.
“His work ethic is like no other,” said Billy Foster, a classy Yorkshireman who has a résumé that commands your respect. Having been on the bag for champions such as Seve Ballesteros, Gordon Brand Jnr, Darren Clarke, Thomas Bjorn, Sergio Garcia, and Lee Westwood, Foster has the “creds”, as they say.
“When he goes to the practice ground, every shot means something. He’s not just hitting balls; he’s making notes,” Foster said.
To say that Matt Fitzpatrick has been a quick study with this golf business is an understatement as wide as the River Thames. Consider the steady upward mobility:
• In 2012 he won the Boys’ Amateur under the auspices of the R&A.
• The next year he won the US Amateur, a USGA production at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts.
• There was a one-semester fling with Northwestern University to test American college life in late ’13, but Fitzpatrick left school and by mid-’14 he was a professional.
• A rookie on the DP World Tour in 2015, Fitzpatrick needed 10 months and 20 tournaments to break through, holding off Shane Lowry and two others to take out the British Masters.
• By the close of ’15, Fitzpatrick ranked 43rd in the Official World Golf Ranking.
The upward spiral has never stopped. Fitzpatrick won twice in ’16, twice more in ’17, once in ’18, another came in ’20, then he was ushered onto the world stage to stand alone.
“Billy [Foster] has been saying for a while, ‘The time will come, you’re playing so well,’” said Fitzpatrick in the moments after his magical week at the US Open last June.
Perhaps Fitzpatrick wasn’t fully aware of his historical achievement in winning that week (at 27 he had won a major in his 29th try, something fellow Englishmen Lee Westwood, Luke Donald, Paul Casey and Ian Poulter had failed to do in a whopping 290 attempts combined; and he had become just the fourth Englishman to win the US Open).
But clearly people had reminded him of the significance of his locale.
The Country Club is cemented in golf folklore. Fitzpatrick knew that in 2013 when told it was the 100th anniversary of Francis Ouimet’s rags-to-riches tale, an amateur who lived across the street from the club, a former caddie, no less, who miraculously beat English heavyweights Harry Vardon and Ted Ray in the US Open.
When he returned to The Country Club nine years later, this time a polished professional – albeit one with a boyish face and a smile that flashed his braces – Matt Fitzpatrick stayed with the same host family and somehow produced a second unforgettable memory.
Will and Jennifer Fulton will tell you that Matt Fitzpatrick was the same brilliant houseguest, a polished gentleman in every aspect. Polite. Diligent. Neat. Proper lad up and down the checklist. But as he prepared to play at The Country Club in last year’s US Open, Fitzpatrick wore a sly grin when asked if he felt he was more comfortable than his foes.
“I certainly think it gives me an edge over the others, yeah,” he said. “I genuinely do believe that.”
Paul Tesori, a veteran caddie who had been on Webb Simpson’s bag for a 2012 US Open win, didn’t know about Fitzpatrick’s history at The Country Club. But he knew that he loved the way the kid had opened 68-70 to get to 2-under and within three of the lead at Brookine.
Fitzpatrick was in total control of his golf ball, said Tesori, whose man, Simpson, had been a playing competitor for two days. “When I shook [Foster’s] hand on Friday, I said, ‘Congratulations on your first major,’” Tesori said. “Then I said, ‘I hope you don’t believe in jinxes.’”
There was no jinx. There was only brilliance over the final 36 holes, Fitzpatrick shooting 68 to tie for the 54-hole lead, then another 68 to finish at six-under, one clear of two rising superstars, Scottie Scheffler and Will Zalatoris.
That is a huge piece of the Fitzpatrick career, the way in which he continues to beat quality players. The young Englishman held off Lowry in his first win, then in a pair of DP World Tour triumphs (2016, 2020) he bested Tyrrell Hatton and Lee Westwood, respectively. Holding off Masters champion Scheffler in Brookline and denying three-time major winner Spieth at the RBC Heritage is the sort of fortitude Fitzpatrick is made of.
“He’s got guts, a lot of guts,” said Foster, who will be alongside for the chance to add even more history when Fitzpatrick tees it up at Los Angeles Country Club’s North course from June 15 for the 123rd US Open. Since World War I only five players – Bobby Jones, 1929-’30; Ralph Guldahl, 1937-’38; Ben Hogan, 1950-’51; Curtis Strange, 1988-’89; and Brooks Koepka, 2017-’18 – have gone back-to-back, yet Fitzpatrick is undaunted.
He’s been within impressive historical framework before and has met the challenge. He’s also got a swing that delivers ferocious clubhead and ball speed that translated into a driving distance average of 272.6 metres in 2022, up from 263.3 metres just three years earlier.
But most of all, Matt Fitzpatrick has an on-course demeanor seemingly made for the big games. Whether he’s calm because he’s filled with confidence or he’s confident because he’s so calm, the young man has proven he can deliver in the clutch.
The 9-iron from about 169 metres that led to a kick-in birdie to win the playoff against Spieth? It looked eerily familiar to the 9-iron he hit out of a fairway bunker on the 72nd hole to set up a game-winning par in the US Open.
As Russell Fitzpatrick said, “No nerves for Matt. He is fine.”
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FULL US OPEN COVERAGE: https://www.australiangolfdigest.com.au/tournaments/usopen/
