Matt Fitzpatrick’s dedication pays dividends after special US Open triumph

Matt Fitzpatrick’s remarkable transformation is now complete after the Sheffield man dared to dream big and produced a majestic display at Brookline.

A US Open champion with a clairvoyant outlook on the game of golf, the most eye-catching aspect of Fitzpatrick’s surgical final round of 68, which included 17 of 18 greens in regulation, was the smooth yet crushing power he displayed off the tee.

Fitzpatrick’s self-deprecating nature saw him quickly describe himself as a “bomber” in his winner’s press conference while imagining how his newfound game could break down the hallowed Old Course at St Andrews in a few weeks’ time. His versatility, evidenced by gaining just 0.23 strokes putting this week, which had always been the cornerstone of his success, enabled him to become just the second male player in the game’s history to win the US Amateur Championship and the US Open at the same course. The first: Jack Nicklaus.

“It’s not a skill to hit the ball a long way in my opinion,” Fitzpatrick famously said in 2020 when discussing Bryson DeChambeau’s dramatic power increase that led to him winning the US Open that year. “I could put on 40 pounds. I could go and see a biomechanist, and I could gain 40 yards; that’s actually a fact. I could gain that. But the skill in my opinion is to hit the ball straight.”

Fitzpatrick’s trim figure confirms he has not added 40 pounds, but he has added 10.1 yards on average in three years. The move has seen him rocket up from 151st to 63rd on the PGA Tour’s driving statistic, with his club head speed jumping from 112mph to 119mph.

This week the gains were further pronounced, averaging 309.2 yards off the tee to sit 10th among his peers. He is now outmuscling the likes of Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm