When the Going Gets Tough, Matt Fitzpatrick Gets Going

Not every player on the PGA TOUR is built to win tournaments at 30-under. Those titles usually go to the guys who need Dramamine—one week they look like the best player in the world, the next three they’re catching Friday flights home.

Matt Fitzpatrick is not one of those players.

His game is built for consistency—built for a marathon in a sport that too often thinks it’s a sprint. But at his core, like all players cut from that cloth, he’s a dawg.

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A week after failing to close out Cameron Young at TPC Sawgrass, the Englishman made the four-hour drive to the Valspar Championship and buried a closing birdie to edge David Lipsky by one.

And he did it with the same fire we’ve seen time and time again in the Ryder Cup.

“To obviously come away with a win this week is really special, considering last week's performance as well,” he said. “So, (I) just feel really good about my game coming into the week and to continue that this week was really a great feeling.”

When the final groups made the turn, the lead sat at 9-under—single digits in an era where that number is often blown past before the weekend, that’s the good stuff.

And it didn’t take a genius to see where this was headed.

Fitzpatrick has shown us time and time again: when conditions toughen and par becomes a good score, he rises. We just saw it seven days ago at THE PLAYERS. But if you need more proof, it’s everywhere.

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U.S. Open champion at The Country Club (winning score: 6-under). Four top-10s at Bay Hill. Five top-25s at Augusta—file that one away for a few weeks. And now the Valspar, where the winning scores the past four years are now 11-under, 11-under, 12-under, 10-under.

The pattern is pretty clear.

He’ll now take the next few weeks to rest and prepare for the year’s first major—where he’ll be, unsurprisingly, one of the more popular picks in the betting community.