Although he had been at Brookline all week, Alex Fitzpatrick, who played for Wake Forest before turning pro – he will play in the Irish Open in two weeks – flew home on Saturday. Alas, by the time he landed in Charlotte, North Carolina, and drove 90 minutes to his off-campus pad, big brother had shot to the top of the leaderboard, tied with Zalatoris.
Determined not to miss the moment, Alex woke up at 5 a.m. Sunday and flew back to Boston.
“There’s two ways you could look at it, really,” he said, when asked if there was something fated about Matt Fitzpatrick and The Country Club. “At the start of the week people were expecting him to go out and win because of what happened in 2013. You could take it as pressure, who knows how it’s going to go, but he stayed calm and had a good game plan.
“I didn’t think I would cry, but I ended up crying,” he added. “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. If I showed you how hard he works and the things he does to get better, it would blow your mind, honestly. I guess there is such thing as golf gods, but for it to happen here is extra special.”
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. He took out a 9-iron and caught the ball flush, clearing the lip and pelting the green for a two-putt par.
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. 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. But that’s certainly not how Matt Fitzpatrick would explain this week.
He charted all those shots, got longer off the tee after watching others bludgeon courses into submission, and drew on the lessons learned from being in the final group Sunday at the PGA Championship last month, when he tied for fifth.
That The Country Club felt like home was the final puzzle piece. Same town. Same course. Same bedroom.
“Know where to hit it; know where to miss it,” he said. “Yeah, just happy to be unbeaten around this place.”