"That week my game was the best it has ever been”: Matt Fitzpatrick explains what helped him win the PGA Tour Heritage
Matt Fitzpatrick is in Rochester, New York, to take part in the PGA Championship. It will be a weekend in which he hopes to replicate the sporting form he exhibited last month when he won the RBC Heritage. In his own words, at that time he was "better than ever".
He talked to the press from Oak Hill Country Club, home of the 2023 PGA Championship. According to France 24, Matt Fitzpatrick believes that "he has learned a lot" since his fateful last round at last season's PGA Championship.
He further expressed what he has learned after his performance at the RBC Heritage:
GolfChannel: Matt Fitzpatrick explains why he excels when faced with an intimidating golf course like Oak Hill.
#PGAChamp https://t.co/XYJQFWH2Ga #GolfChannel #GrowTheGame
"That week (at the Heritage), my game was the best it has ever been," said Fitzpatrick. "Statistically, I didn't even putt that well that week, so it's kind of a case of if I can play the same way again and putt as well as I know I can, then that's also another level that I can add to my performance."
Fitzpatrick continued:
"That's kind of a big thing, as well, for myself that I feel like if I can do that, I know I can contend and win."
Delving into the reasons for this growth, Matt Fitzpatrick said that it is a question of learning to trust himself:
According to France 24, this is how Englishman put it:
"I think I learned a lot from that final round (at the 2022 PGA Championship)," said Fitzpatrick. "There was a lot of talk about me playing a little bit too fast, looking a bit rushed. At the time you, don't see that and I only really had, like, a week afterwards before I was playing the next run of tournaments, so I didn't get much time to reflect on it."
Fitzpatrick continued:
"But then, when the time came Sunday of (2022) U.S .Open, I felt like I knew exactly what to do -- just do the opposite of what I was doing at the PGA. Just the confidence that I can do it, I think being the biggest thing."
Matt Fitzpatrick at the PGA Championship
Matt Fitzpatrick has participated in seven editions of the PGA Championship. He didn´t make the cut in three of them (2017, 18, 20). His best performance was, precisely, last season, where he came close to leading the tournament. However, a disastrous performance on the last day left him with no chance.
That fourth round saw Matt Fitzpatrick make five bogeys against only two birdies, to finish with three over par, far below what he had done on the previous days. What he had done in the first three days was so meritorious that it was enough to finish T5, despite that fourth day.
Barely a month later, Matt Fitzpatrick won his first major, the U.S. Open. Subsequently, he went on to string together 15 tournaments (counting the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons) in which he missed only four cuts, with the same number of Top-10 finishes.
That streak ended with his victory in this year's RBC Heritage, a tournament in which, although he also had a bad day (Round 2), he was able to recover to force the play-off. There, he defeated Jordan Spieth by one stroke.