Matt Fitzpatrick

The 27-year-old Englishman followed a top-10 finish at last month's PGA Championship with his first major victory in Brookline, Mass., on Sunday.

Zalatoris remedied that somewhat with a brilliant birdie from nine feet on the par-3 No. 16 to add pressure, and they came to No. 18 with Scheffler just done at 5 under after his 67, with Zalatoris at 5 under and Fitzpatrick at 6 under. The first happened on No. 15, when Fitzpatrick and Zalatoris stood tied at 5 under and Fitzpatrick teed off wide right into one of those deals where a player needs to part the crowd just to take the shot. His birdie from there rolled right down the boulevard without much doubt, while Zalatoris played from rough on the other side of the fairway and made a bogey. He did it to relegate Zalatoris, that 25-year-old habitual contender in major tournaments, to a third runner-up finish and a sixth top-10 finish in merely nine tries at the big four. Fitzpatrick did it after a day of gripping competition in which he, Zalatoris and Scheffler separated themselves for a three-man tussle at the top, each grabbing the lead at some point. From that sand, on the left side of the 18th fairway, Fitzpatrick forged the shot likely to stoke reminiscence when this rowdy 122nd U.S. Open becomes a matter of the distant past.

Matt Fitzpatrick came through a final-round tussle with Will Zalatoris and world No 1 Scottie Scheffler to secure a maiden major title with a thrilling ...

Fitzpatrick nailed a 50-foot birdie at the 13th to pull level with Zalatoris, who had to convert from 12 feet to avoid a second successive bogey, with Fitzpatrick then jumping two clear when recovered from a poor tee shot at the 15th to hit his approach to 20 feet and hole the putt. A two-putt birdie on the same hole moved Fitzpatrick to six under alongside Scheffler, while Zalatoris fired his tee shot at the sixth to tap-in range and almost holed-out from the seventh to post back-to-back birdies and get back within two of the lead. A 25-foot birdie at the fourth from Scheffler was matched when Fitzpatrick holed from eight feet at the third, pulling the pair clear of the chasing pack, only for the American to post a fourth birdie of the day at the sixth to move to six under.

Matt Fitzpatrick, the 27-year-old from Yorkshire, won by one from Will Zalatoris and Scottie Scheffler while Rory McIlroy and Collin Morikawa finished tied ...

I thought it was a course that you could play pretty well at and a course that could kind of hurt you in the back pretty quickly. With birdies at the 14th and 15th, McIlroy was minus two and back in with a small shout. McIlroy made par at the tricky 2nd but dropped a shot at the 3rd, a hole which caused him issues in three of the four rounds. From there, he hit a towering, terrific iron into the heart of the green. The actions of a champion. Enter Scheffler. A terrific approach to the 17th set up a birdie three, and cut Fitzpatrick’s lead to one. A Zalatoris birdie at the short 11th meant a two-shot lead at six under. A Zalatoris bogey was the natural outcome. To the 72nd hole; where the Englishman hit his drive into a bunker. He dropped a shot at the 12th and carved his drive into rough at the 13th, from where he could only chip sideways. The duo were now tied at minus five, with Scheffler missing the opportunity to join the party up ahead at the par five 14th green. Scheffler joined him with a birdie at the 5th.

England's Matt Fitzpatrick has survived a thrilling final few holes at Brookline to claim the US Open title...

Fitzpatrick pushed his to the left, tapping in for par. "That's a big error there, one of the only errors he's made. "You can hit it the corporate tents and get a free drop.

Matt Fitzpatrick becomes the first Englishman to win a major golf title since 2016, beating world number one Scottie Scheffler and American Will Zalatoris ...

However, he held his nerve and hit a brilliant recovery to land it 15 metres beyond the flag to let it run down. The world number 18, who won the US Amateur title in 2013, held on to finish on 6-under, winning by a shot from Scheffler and Zalatoris. But the 15th proved the pivotal hole, as Zalatoris missed a long par putt and Fitzpatrick sank a long birdie putt to establish a two-shot buffer.

Matt Fitzpatrick shot a 2-under 68 at The Country Club to finish the tournament at 6-under 274 and beat Will Zalatoris and Scottie Scheffler by one.

Nicklaus won at Pebble Beach in 1961 and 1972. Fitzpatrick hit 17 greens in regulation. Zalatoris had a 14-foot birdie putt to tie, but missed it by a fraction.

Englishman Matt Fitzpatrick won the U.S. Open on Sunday, winning his first major on the same course where he took the U.S. Amateur title nine years earlier.

Fitzpatrick also became the 13th men's golfer overall to win both the U.S. Amateur and the U.S. Open in his career. At 27, Fitzpatrick is also the youngest player from England to win a major since Tony Jacklin at the 1970 U.S. Open. He said, 'Finally. Congratulations for winning in the States,'" Fitzpatrick said of Nicklaus. He is the second player from England over the past 50 years to win the U.S. Open, joining Justin Rose in 2013. He was even more clutch from a fairway bunker on the 18th that set up par for a 2-under 68. Zalatoris was a runner-up in the second straight major.

Jupiter resident Matt Fitzpatrick has won the U.S. Open, winning his first major on the same course where he took the U.S. Amateur title nine years earlier.

Nicklaus won at Pebble Beach in 1961 and 1972. Zalatoris had a 14-foot birdie putt to tie, but missed it by a fraction. But he hit the middle of the green and two-putted from 18 feet for par.

Matt Fitzpatrick has been zeroing in on his first PGA Tour win for some time, and when he finally grabbed it, it was a big one – taking the 2022 US Open in ...

In all, Fitzpatrick – previously a seven-time European Tour winner – made more than 80 feet of putts over the final nine holes. Fitzpatrick put the blade-style putter, which includes face grooves just like the Tracy II, in play in 2020. Although 7-woods have become increasingly popular in the past several years, Fitzpatrick was one of its earlier adopters.

*All products featured on Golf Digest are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an ...

In all, Fitzpatrick—previously a seven-time European Tour winner—made more than 80 feet of putts over the final nine holes. That meant using a special high-strength titanium originally designed for the Mars Lander. The lighter and faster-flexing alloy (ATI 425) means more design freedom to create extra off-center-hit stability in the TSi2 and movable weight in the more pear-shaped TSi3. Fitzpatrick put the blade-style putter, which includes face grooves just like the Tracy II, in play in 2020. The win bookends Fitzpatrick’s 2013 U.S. Amateur win at the same venue and the familiar surroundings clearly agreed with him. Zalatoris dropped a shot with a bogey at 15, but with Scheffler about to knot him with a birdie at 17, Fitz dropped a 19-footer for another birdie at 15 after a brilliant iron approach from a bare patch 230 yards out that proved to be the difference. However things really got interesting starting at the 13th, where Fitz dropped a 48-foot putt for birdie to seemingly take the lead until Zalatoris dropped a lengthy putt for par.

The Sheffield-born golfer adds title to the US Amateur Championship he won at the same course, a feat matched only by Jack Nicklaus.

“Not expected to do well, not expected to succeed. So hats off to him. “I feel like I certainly work hard for it. “Not to compare it to my football team, but I feel like I’m the same deal,” he explained. “Any time you’re sharing a record with Jack Nicklaus, it’s unbelievable,” said Fitzpatrick after his triumph at the course just outside Boston. “So for me to have that as well is incredible. “I just felt so comfortable around this place.

It was Fitzpatrick's first PGA TOUR win, and he becomes the 13th player and first non-American to win the U.S. Amateur and U.S. Open. He's also the second, ...

Fitzpatrick still looks like a kid, which is to say he doesn’t look all that different from the player who won here in 2013, with the exception of the logos and maybe a few extra pounds. Jon Rahm captured the 2021 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, the site of his first TOUR win and not far from the hiking trails where he proposed to his wife. Fitzpatrick is the first player since Danny Willett at the 2016 Masters to notch his first TOUR win at a major. “Yeah, just happy to be unbeaten around this place.” If you’re a certain type of dewy-eyed dreamer, you can still squint at Matt and Alex and see Ouimet and his own kid-caddie, Eddie Lowery, in 1913. “That’s going to look bad on TV. I’ve said for a long time he deserves one more than anyone I can think of. You could take it as pressure, who knows how it’s going to go, but he stayed calm and had a good game plan. The final hurdle for Fitzpatrick, having driven into the fairway bunker on 18, was clearing the lip that had thwarted Jon Rahm the day before. The relationship between a player and a golf course can mean more than meets the eye. Fitzpatrick’s 17 top-10s without a win were the most on TOUR since the start of the 2019-20 season. Zalatoris, who lost playoffs at the Farmers Insurance Open (Luke List) and PGA Championship (Justin Thomas) earlier this season, and who also was seeking his first TOUR win, had a birdie putt on 18 to force a playoff, but it burned the left edge. This is horrible (laughter).’ And up to that point really, I'd really not missed many shots.

The Bryson 'mockery' and $4.5m crossroads moment behind golf feud's decisive blow.

But never in the reverse order of importance,” he wrote. Its want to treat players as their employees, not individual contractors, and its supreme control over all media rights are points of controversy. “Going back to the Bryson incident there; I said it takes skill to drive the ball straight in my opinion. “He’s (DeChambeau) in the rough and miles up and he’s just hitting wedges everywhere. It doesn’t matter if I play my best, he’s going to be 50 yards in front of me off the tee. It’s a grind that McIlroy, and indeed all the greats of professional golf, endured to achieve success. I had a chance and I didn’t take it, and that kind of said a lot to myself about myself. “You want to have records. I was just gutted that I didn’t win. “I came away from the US PGA and literally couldn’t care less about how much I made that week. I said I could add on 40 yards and 40 pounds of muscle,” Fitzpatrick said after the US Open. But despite the departures, this year’s US Open proved that while LIV Golf may have a few big names, it is yet to draw one that is relevant in terms of performance.

His average driving distance on the PGA TOUR has risen from 287.9 yards in 2019 to 298.1 in 2022. He averaged nearly 310 yards this week at Brookline to rank ...

“I feel like maybe four years ago if I was in this position, and I was playing with Will in the final group, I'd be concerned that I'm going to be 15, 20 (yards) behind him. He's hitting the ball really well and has been knocking on the door for a long time. So, he kicked it back up a notch to begin this year. Combined with his always impressive iron game, Fitzpatrick ranks fifth on TOUR in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green (+1.6). He gained just +0.2 strokes per round in the same category two years ago. “It will be great. He averaged nearly 310 yards this week at Brookline to rank 16th in the field (while also ranking fifth in driving accuracy). Driving it past playing partner Will Zalatoris was a confidence booster during their back-and-forth tussle at Brookline. Earlier this week, he outdrove playing partner Dustin Johnson on a number of occasions. He then backed up and did the same against the big-hitting Sam Burns in the third round. It's like a training program. It's like going to the gym basically. With the help of a speed training system called The Stack, co-developed by biomechanics expert Sasho Mackenzie, Fitzpatrick has spent countless hours earning his distance gains.

And they certainly don't win America's national championship on the same course where they had previously claimed the US Amateur title, a feat achieved only ...

Other than that, the pair worked on taking a lot of “set” out of Fitzpatrick’s left wrist, a move that has revolutionised his iron play. But the knock on him – a reason perhaps why he had yet to win as a professional in the US – was always that he lacked the length to compete at the elite level. “It was heartbreaking to lose that day,” Foster says. And the rest is history.” As a result of his work with biomechanist Sasho Mackenzie and a Speedstick called “The Stack”, Fitzpatrick is now much longer off the tee. But his approach play and chipping are now on a level with the rest of his game. Gone is the short-hitting but accurate short-game specialist, replaced by the owner of a strong all-round game. “Anyway, we met at the Bear’s Club in Florida and studied the full list of notes we had on his chipping,” Walker continued. The holing of putts has always been a strength of the Fitzpatrick game, alongside his metronomic ability to find fairways from the tee. I’ve got a bit of a way to go, but this is a good start. But the 19-footer that disappeared into the cup two holes later for what turned out to be the decisive birdie is surely a close second. Fitzpatrick’s historic breakthrough at the highest level – achieved while staying with the same family and sleeping in the same room he did back in August 2013 – is hardly the biggest surprise, of course.

Will Zalatoris and Scottie Scheffler, who tied for second, made it interesting down the stretch at the Country Club, but Fitzpatrick held on to finish at ...

But Scheffler’s putting stroke deserted him on the back nine when he bogeyed the 10th and 11th holes when he needed three putts to get his ball in the hole on both greens. But a missed fairway off the 12th tee led to a layup short of the green and ultimately a bogey. That dropped him to four under par for the tournament. He stumbled on the 10th hole when a lengthy second shot was short of the green and led to another bogey. But his tee shot on the par-3 sixth hole was excessively long, sailing 66 feet past the hole, which led to a bogey. Then, on the next hole, he sent his second shot into a greenside bunker, which led to a second successive bogey. Then the tiny 11th tormented Fitzpatrick as a 7-foot par putt skidded past the hole for a second successive bogey. On Sunday, Scheffler carved up the front nine again, with four birdies in his first six holes. But his 3-wood on the 444-yard, par-4 18th hole was ripped left and landed in the center of a yawning bunker just off the fairway. He steadied himself with three consecutive pars and at the par-3, 158-yard sixth hole, he drilled his tee shot 2 feet from the flag for an easy birdie. In the past year, Fitzpatrick, now No. 10 in the men’s world golf rankings, has worked tirelessly off the course to increase the speed of his swing, which leads to greater distance, and usually to lower scores. BROOKLINE, Mass. — This year’s U.S. Open began as the setting for an unprecedented showdown between golfers who had remained loyal to the established PGA Tour and a breakaway pack of ex-colleagues who recently joined the new, rebel Saudi-backed LIV Golf series.

Billy Foster grabbed the flag on the 18th green, pulled it toward his face and gave it a kiss. Finally, tha...

"But tonight and next week I think I'm going to have a liver like a football. One of their few disagreements this week came over how to approach the 18th tee box. To do it today is incredible." He'll get a nice cut of the winner's cheque. Matt Fitzpatrick's US Open win also marked a breakthrough for one of the most popular loopers in the game. Bjorn lost to Ben Curtis by one.

Editor's note: Joe Posnanski has been named national sportswriter of the year by five different organizations and won two Emmys as part of NBC's digital ...

Matt Fitzpatrick was going for a little piece of golf history — he was trying to win the U.S. Open, win for the first time in the U.S., become the first English golfer to win the Open since Justin Rose almost a decade ago and only the third English golfer to win it since 1925. Tom Watson will tell you that when he hit his purest shot — the 7-iron he hit on the 18th hole at Turnberry in The Duel in the Sun against Nicklaus — he thought the ball looked like a piece of art against the Scottish sky. In good times and bad, he would think back to that shot and the way the ball looked. You would hope and expect that none of this was playing in Fitzpatrick’s mind as he set up for the shot. See, the last time I played golf was 1992, and it was at Augusta National. In those days, I was columnist at The Augusta Chronicle, and the newspaper had this very cool deal where everyone who covered the Masters for the paper got to play a round of golf at Augusta National on the last day before the course closed for summer. And this — THIS — is why I love golf, even if I don’t play the game. Fitzpatrick is a great golfer with all the shots. Sunday at The Country Club of Brookline, he played the round of his life. He got a great break on the 15th hole. The last time I played a round of golf — and I promise you that at some point this will wind back around to Matt Fitzpatrick and something extraordinary that happened at the U.S. Open — was 30 years ago. Golf is a personal game in the way that football is not. He’d played in more than 100 PGA TOUR events since turning pro as a 20-year-old, and it just seemed odd that someone with his game, his touch around the greens, his brilliant iron play, his meticulous golfing mind*, couldn’t quite break through and win in the states.

Matt Fitzpatrick's US Open victory at Brookline on Sunday was also a first major victory for his caddie Billy Foster, who had endured decades of ...

He hits a three wood and puts it in the bunker and I thought to myself, ‘Oh no.’ But his recovery was one of the best shots I’ve ever seen. He likes to hit a driver on that hole, I like him to hit a three wood. “When he kept missing the five-foot putts I thought to myself, ‘The little bastard!’ It was doing my head in because we all know how good a putter he normally is. He kept telling me the first time on the job, ‘I’ll just do 25 weeks and maybe get a fill-in for the others.’ I think he’s had about two weeks off in four years.” But he says he was in that state – all the way from Sandwich home to Yorkshire, in fact – after Thomas Bjørn passed up the opportunity to win the 2003 Open Championship. “I thought about that every day for six months,” Foster said. There was a lot of heartbreak in there, a lot of scar tissue.

Coach Mike Walker reflects on the major winner's relentless desire to improve and the emotions of his Brookline breakthrough.

“Matt is scared of him – or do you call it mutual respect?” Walker says with a laugh. He was always hell bent on one thing and that was getting to the top. Fitzpatrick had been confident enough in his US Open position and mindset to let Walker leave the premises on day three. “We had agreed on a goal for this year of getting to the top 10 in the world. “Let’s just say he made a few grown men cry. “He struggles to take two days off. Key, of course, was that Fitzpatrick, who is more analytical than most of his peers, accepted he needed to find extra yards. One thing we did always think was that, if he was going to win a major, it would probably be the US Open. We felt it really suited his game. “He has worked with Matt Roberts on strength and conditioning for years,” Walker says. Whereas before, as the coach you are always aware of the goals and what they want to achieve but I felt I had my hands tied behind my back a bit. He has done it with a combination of gym training with Matt Roberts and Sasho in the background with his weights [fixed to the end of a practice stick called ‘The Stack]. Yet he needed an extra level — one shown when the Yorkshireman held the US Open trophy aloft at Brookline on Sunday.

US Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick says sharing an honour with Jack Nicklaus is "incredible" as he revealed his remarkable bunker shot during the final round ...

I feel like I proved I have the ability to go out there. I pride myself on being a gritty competitor, just wanting to win badly and doing the right things." This year I have been three or four shots back going into the final round and then had a good round to finish in the top 10. If I get a chance to win, I'll go and win. "I have never felt like that. "[Winning the US Open] is incredibly surreal.

The 27-year-old from Sheffield had never won a professional event in the US before seeing off Will Zalatoris at the end of an epic battle at Brookline. A day ...

“All I was thinking about was trying to win,” he said. “It was money being thrown at me and more money than I could comprehend but what was the risk? I just want to take it all in.” “I have struggled with fairway bunkers all year. “It’s way better than I ever expected,” Fitzpatrick said. Key to his achievement was a widely acclaimed bunker shot on the tournament’s 72nd hole.

Lighting struck twice for Englishman Matt Fitzpatrick, winning his maiden U.S. Open title at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts where he won the ...

“It means the world to Billy,” Fitzpatrick said afterwards. Tiger had just come on the range and this chap had obviously come to get him some balls. "My Mum and Dad were in the stands pointing behind me. “It gives you that confidence boost going into the week, for sure. On the last hole held a one-stroke lead over Zalatoris, breathing down his neck. It wasn’t his [Tiger’s] caddie.

Alex Fitzpatrick was sure Will Zalatoris would make it. Damn sure. He'd just watched his older brother miss his birdie putt on the high side on the 72nd ...

“I idolised Tony Jacklin,” he said, sitting on a couch and watching a re-run of the NBC broadcast, gleefully dissecting every shot. His parents and his team did, on the contrary, celebrate with their share of drinks. In exchange, Foster let Russ know he wanted a replica of the US Open trophy. In the middle of the room were four huge tables pushed together; on top of them were things for Matt to sign. “It’s about $300 a bottle!” On the back wall was one of those basketball hoops you hang on a door, accompanied by a scoreboard for the week-long free-throw contest. With Matt off shaking hands and smiling, USGA staff began setting up for the party in a player lounge. Then, with temperatures dropping quickly, into the clubhouse for a meet-and-greet of sorts with The Country Club membership. With the media interviews finally over, it was back to the 18th green for more photos. He’d just watched his older brother miss his birdie putt on the high side on the 72nd hole of the United States Open, and he knew Zalatoris had watched it as well, and now he was sure Zalatoris would pour his in the middle. Others were potential new ones, wanting a piece of the man on top of the sport. In all honesty, I’d sell it immediately, and that’s not the spirit of the deal. It was Father’s Day in England as well as in America, and this was the best present possible.