PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland — Matt Fitzpatrick logs every shot he hits into a database. It doesn’t matter if it’s in a practice round or a tournament: the total yardage, end result, lie, wind direction, all of it. The 30-year-old Englishman has been collecting this data for 15 years.
So when patterns start to emerge, Fitzpatrick can easily identify and diagnose his game’s issues. He knows exactly what his weaknesses are. At all times. That also means he knows when he has reached his weakest — ever.
Fitzpatrick, co-leading the Open Championship at Royal Portrush after a morning round of 67, didn’t need to rack his brain to pinpoint that moment. The former U.S. Open champion felt like he hit rock bottom 122 days ago. But in the months that followed, he found a new coach, a new caddie and a groove that has him at the top of the leaderboard in County Antrim.
“It was really bad,” Fitzpatrick said. “I couldn’t find the face with the ball. It was just not good.”
In March at The Players Championship, Fitzpatrick shot rounds of 78 and 72. He lost nearly three shots to the rest of the field in strokes gained, with his chipping remaining the only positive category on his statistics chart. A few days later, he broke up with his caddie of six years, Billy Foster. The next tournament, with a new caddie, Dan Parratt, he did it all over again. Negative strokes gained. A missed cut. A definitive sign: Fitzpatrick was in a bad place.
“That’s the lowest I’ve been in my career. Statistically, it could be the worst run that I’ve played,” he said. “I just didn’t feel good or know where it was going.”
Calamity Corner class. Matt Fitzpatrick makes birdie to tie the lead.
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Since Fitzpatrick’s career-altering U.S. Open victory in 2022 at The Country Club, he has won once in the U.S. and once in Europe, both in 2023. The 2024 season was different. Fitzpatrick couldn’t win, and his rankings plummeted; he started the year at No. 8 in the world and ended at No. 43 and had to dig to make the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup top 50.
Somehow, in 2025, things got even worse. In his first seven starts of the season, Fitzpatrick posted one top-25 finish, missed three cuts and failed to crack the top 40 three times. His iron game, which once helped him win a major championship, was starting to drive him sideways.
Fitzpatrick didn’t seek out a coaching change as much as the transition to a new voice became an unfortunate necessity. Swing coach Mike Walker originally started working with Fitzpatrick when the latter was 14 years old, through his U.S. Amateur win and into his PGA Tour career. But this year, Walker has been unable to travel with Fitzpatrick. Walker is a full-time caregiver, supporting his wife, who is battling cancer at home.
So Mark Blackburn — considered one of the best coaches in the world — entered the picture. Before any final hiring decisions, Blackburn wanted to call Walker and speak to him one-on-one. Then he rang Alex Fitzpatrick, Matt’s younger brother, to make sure he was comfortable with Blackburn coaching both brothers simultaneously. Eventually, he checked all his boxes and got to work, especially on Matt Fitzpatrick’s iron game. Blackburn’s instruction gave him the ingredients to hit the shots he wanted to see.
“We’re developing that rapport. It’s like dating someone,” Blackburn says. “You learn how to deal with them, and it seems to be going really well. He started playing really, really nicely.”
Blackburn and Fitzpatrick are 12 weeks into their relationship. The results have come quickly, including a T8 at May’s PGA Championship and back-to-back top-10 finishes at the Rocket Classic and the Scottish Open coming into this week.
“I got to understand my tendencies a lot better to understand what I need to do to fix that,” Fitzpatrick said. “Kind of unfortunate circumstances in a way — well, very unfortunate circumstances, really — but I started working with Mark Blackburn, and he’s given me a lot of time. I feel like just a bit of change of information has made me understand myself a little bit better.”
Matt Fitzpatrick’s opening 67 puts him into contention at Royal Portrush. (Andy Buchanan /AFP via Getty Images)
The levelheadedness of a golfer with direction was on full display at Royal Portrush on Thursday. Fitzpatrick fired the lowest opening round of his major championship career. Fitzpatrick says he doesn’t even enjoy links golf, even though he has one of the lowest ball flights in the pro game and can easily keep his ball under the Royal Portrush gusts. It doesn’t matter. The nascent momentum doesn’t look to be stopping anytime soon. Fitzpatrick is reaching the light at the end of his long tunnel of lows.
“I feel like I’ve just had more consistency, and from there, from consistency, you can kind of build confidence and keep calm,” he continued.
Fitzpatrick’s opening 67 was aided by an eagle on the par-4 11th and a miracle at Calamity Corner, the infamously difficult par-3 16th. Fitzpatrick, whose ball trundled into the ditch you simply don’t want to find, chipped from the steep hillside and celebrated as his ball slam-dunked into the cup.
On Thursday, Fitzpatrick walked the fairways with the kind of vocal support you’d expect for an Englishman at an Open Championship. But that scene was made even better with the knowledge that four months ago, Fitzpatrick wouldn’t have been able to fathom that this start was possible for him. Now, he doesn’t have to. Fitzpatrick’s climb back to form is well on its way.
(Top photo: Richard Heathcote / Getty Images)
