Matt Fitzpatrick is one of the hottest players in the game right now.
The 31-year-old Englishman is the only PGA Tour player with three wins thus far this season, and is fresh off a 22nd-place finish at the U.S. Open at Shinnecock.
Fitzpatrick is a famously data-driven player in his approach to each golf course, and is known to take copious notes on every shot he hits. Those insights are aided by his official performance data partner Protiviti, which works closely with Fitzpatrick and his team to help turn his practice observations and tournament-round statistics into actionable insights for smarter preparation via a custom-built analytics platform, mobile app and AI powered tools.
On this week’s episode of Subpar, hosts Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz asked Fitzpatrick if he would be willing to share one of his written observations after something bad happened on the course.
“None of them were written down,” Fitzpatrick said with a laugh. “They were more said out loud.”
Fitzpatrick has played in 12 U.S. Opens since 2014 and won the 2022 edition of the championship at the Country Club in Brookline, Mass. Stoltz decided to put Fitzpatrick on the spot: Which U.S. Open venue is his favorite, excluding the course where he won?
Despite the recent sting of a difficult weekend in Long Island with rounds of 74-73 on Saturday and Sunday, Fitzpatrick acknowledged that Shinnecock would still be his pick.
“I really like Shinnecock, to be fair,” he said. “I’ve played two U.S. Opens there. I think that’s the place I’ve played the most. I really liked the setup in 2018. I thought it was really difficult, but it was really fair.
“I think people forget that the one thing that I feel that that place offers you, for the most part, apart from maybe a couple of greens, is that if you are out of position, you can get it into a position where you still have a chance of an up and down,” he continued. “And I think that is a big thing. Yeah, the up and down is tough, but you could still be fat side of the green and have a chip, and I felt, that year, it played well from that standpoint. I figured it was the same this year, obviously different conditions with how soft the greens were the first two days, but I would honestly say, Shinnecock is a great venue.”
For more from Fitzpatrick, including a course he’d like to see host a U.S. Open return, check out the full episode of Subpar below.
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