Matt Fitzpatrick's first major win, Phil Mickelson and the biggest takeaways from the 2022 U.S. Open

BROOKLINE, Mass. — Before Sunday, England's Matt Fitzpatrick had never won a professional golf tournament in the United States.

Now, he has won two of the biggest golf events in the world on the same course. Nine years after winning the U.S. Amateur at The Country Club outside Boston, Fitzpatrick captured his first PGA Tour victory at the 122nd U.S. Open on the same course on Sunday with a 1-shot win over Will Zalatoris and Masters champion Scottie Scheffler.

Fitzpatrick joins Jack Nicklaus as the only male golfers to win a U.S. Amateur and U.S. Open at the same course (Nicklaus did it at Pebble Beach in 1961 and 1972).

Here are five things we learned at the U.S. Open this week:

Fitzpatrick became the first player to get his first PGA Tour victory in a major since fellow Englishman Danny Willett won the 2016 Masters. But it's not like Fitzpatrick hadn't won as a professional before.

Fitzpatrick, 27, won seven times on the European Tour (now the DP World Tour), including twice at the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai. He had been trending in the right direction in majors, with a tie for 14th at the Masters and a tie for fifth at the PGA Championship at Southern Hills last month. The performance at Southern Hills, perhaps more than any other, proved to Fitzpatrick that he could compete at this level.

«With it being a major, it's quite different than a regular PGA Tour event,» Fitzpatrick said. «At the end of the day, they're just really hard to win. I think up until Southern Hills, really, I didn't really appreciate how hard it is actually to win a major. Yeah, I've not challenged, really, up until then.

»I think, myself included, and people on the outside maybe think it's easier than it is. You just have to look at