FITZ ALREADY A GRAMMY WINNER
MATT FITZPATRICK revealed a weight had been lifted from his game before he climbed into contention at The Players Championship.
The world No.11 shot rounds of 66 and 69 to sit five shots off the clubhouse lead held by his successor as US Open champion, Wyndham Clark.
And Fitzpatrick said: “It felt a bit more like my old self. How long have I not felt like my old self? Since February of last year probably.”
The Sheffield star then recounted how he had put weights in the grips of his irons during “testing” at the start of last season, then tried the same with his driver. He took the weights out of his iron the following month but “forgot” about the four grams added to his biggest club until this February.
“I took it to Titleist, they regripped it for me and they’re like: ‘Oh, you know there’s a weight in there?’ and I almost had a heart attack.”
Fitzpatrick said he had been pulling his drives left for a year until just before the Phoenix Open. “My driving kind of got worse from pretty much after Harbour Town,” he said.
“We were just very confused swing-wise and did all sorts. The weight in the grip just made the ball go more right-to-left, basically more club closure.
“Since I took the weight out of the top of the driver I’ve driven it a lot better.
“As soon as I came out and hit the next day, it felt night and day. I could hit it as hard as I wanted and it wouldn’t go left. Previously, I felt like I hit it hard and it would just go straight left.”
The Ryder Cup star still won the RBC Heritage Classic and the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship with the handicap. “Maybe I’d have won four times if I had it out,” he said.
Starting on the 10th, Fitzpatrick had shared the second-round lead until finding the water on 13 on his way to a double bogey.
Clark (bottom) has dropped only two shots in two days in his two 65s – and played the front nine in a record 29.
“That’s pretty cool,” said the world No.5. “I guess I’ve been breaking some records recently, which is pretty neat.”
World No.1 and defending champion Scottie Scheffler (left) needed on-course physio on a neck problem before carding a 69 to sit a shot behind Fitzpatrick. “Most of the day I was pretty much labouring to get the club away from me,” said the 2022 Masters champion.
“I hit a shot on my second hole today and I felt a little something in my neck, and then I tried to hit my tee shot on 12 and that’s when I could barely get the club back.
“So I got some treatment and maybe it loosened up a tiny bit. I did enough today to keep myself in the tournament and that’s really all I could ask for. The way I was getting around the course, the way my neck was feeling, I didn’t know if I was going to be able to continue playing, so yeah, good fight out there.”
Scheffler won the Players Championship last year by five shots here at Sawgrass. He finished on 17 under par, with England’s Tyrrell Hatton his closest challenger.
Ryder Cup star Justin Rose finished in a tie for sixth 12 months ago. Rory McIlroy missed the cut last year.