Los Angeles (United States) (AFP) – Matt Fizpatrick survived a nail-biting playoff with Scottie Scheffler to win his second RBC Heritage title Sunday, as the world number one’s late charge fell just short. Fitzpatrick, who had started the day three strokes clear of Scheffler, seemed set for victory with steady golf including 14 consecutive pars, but nearly threw it away with his first bogey of the day at the 18th.
In a sudden death shoot-out, the Englishman’s superb approach yielded a rare birdie on the Harbour Town Golf Links’ treacherous final hole, for victory. Fitzpatrick said striking an “out of this world” four-iron to secure the last-gasp win had taken “a lot of grit.” “To go out today and go toe-to-toe with Scottie and get over the line there on the 73rd is special,” he said.
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The two men had gone back-and-forth at the start of the day with early birdies on Hilton Head Island. Scheffler made a birdie at 15 to pull within two of the leader, and another at 16 to narrow the gap to one, setting up a tense showdown on the formidable 18th. Faced with the 458-yard par-four flanked by water and marshland, Fitzpatrick failed to find the fairway from the tee, leaving him a tough approach from shallow sand, directly into howling winds.
Fitzpatrick felt the nerves as he badly underhit his chip from the greenside rough and failed to make the 23-foot putt he needed for victory. Both on 18-under par after 72 holes, after final rounds of 67 for Scheffler and 70 for Fitzpatrick, the pair returned to the last tee box. This time both men found the fairway. But Fitzpatrick’s approach landed just 13 feet from the pin, while Scheffler uncharacteristically ballooned his shot and came up well short and wide of the green.
Scheffler gave himself a chance of making par with a fine chip, but it was in vain after Fitzpatrick sank his birdie putt to secure his fourth PGA Tour victory. “Every time he needed something, he made something happen — if it was holding a long putt, chipping in from off the green, you name it, he was doing it,” said Scheffler. “He earned this win, for sure.”
– ‘Means the world’ – Having won here in 2023, it was 31-year-old Fitzpatrick’s second success at the tournament in South Carolina — a happy hunting ground where he frequently holidayed with his family as a youngster. “This is a tournament I wanted to win growing up arguably more than any of the majors, before I kind of understood more about the game,” he said. “But to win it twice means the world.”
It continued a superb run of form for Fitzpatrick, whose sole major win to date is the 2022 US Open. He won last year’s season-ending DP World Tour Championship in Dubai and captured last month’s PGA Tour Valspar Championship a week after finishing second at the Players Championship. It was not just a two-horse race in regulation play Sunday, as Kim Si-woo got within two of Fitzpatrick with a birdie on 15. But the South Korean ended with a bogey on 18 to finish third on 16-under par.
© 2024 AFP
