Matt Fitzpatrick celebrates his birdie putt on the 18th hole during the final round of the Valspar Championship golf tournament Sunday, March 22, 2026, in Palm Harbor, Fla. (AP Photo/Jason Behnken)
Matt Fitzpatrick got his third win on the PGA Tour this week at the Valspar Championship. His win comes just a week after a what Fitzpatrick described as a “disappointing” loss at The Players Championship last week. He and Cameron Young entered hole 18 in a tie for the lead, and Young ultimately came out on top. This week, he would not be denied the win as he was able to sink a long birdie putt on 18. He celebrated with a massive fist pump. All while David Lipsky, who was formerly his co-leader at -10, was walking up 18’s fairway to his tee shot that had landed in the rough.
That has to be a tough visual, watching the man ahead of you sink a birdie putt to go up one, especially when you pair it with the crowd’s reaction. Credit to Lipsky, though he put his second shot not too far off from where Fitzpatrick’s was, but he didn’t give his putt enough juice as it barely missed on the low side of the hole.
For Fitzpatrick, this win has to come as a bit of a relief. It is his first win on the PGA Tour since his win at Harbor Town in the 2023 RBC Heritage. Around this time last year, Fitzpatrick was sitting around 70th in the world. When asked about it, he said, “It was tough this time last year. I missed the cut at The Players played really badly. Had a change in my team on the caddie front. And then didn’t make the cut at Valero. And kind of scrambling my way around Augusta.” He said at that point, good golf felt a long way away.
As I sat in his press conference after the win, it felt like every other sentence contained that word: frustration. In fact, his opening statement was, “Yeah, it felt a little frustrated out there.” He went on to talk about how frustrating it was to lose last week, citing how he “didn’t really feel like I did much wrong coming down the stretch.” He even said that he played “way better” on the back-9 at The Players compared to his back-9 yesterday.
So, where can that frustration come from on a day when you win the golf tournament? Well, on one hand it some of it came from missing some putts and feeling like he was really close. The other thing that can frustrate a golfer, especially when he is trying to win: pace of play.
So I asked Fitzpatrick about the pace of play and specifically the long delay he had on 11, waiting for his playing partner, Adrien Dumont de Chassart. Here’s what he had to say:
“Yeah, that was really frustrating. It was slow today. I felt like there was a lot of stop/start. Yeah, just, you know, just not ready. When you’re not ready to play a golf shot, it gets frustrating after a while. Particularly when you’re playing well yourself or you’re in contention or whatever it is. There’s definitely, you know, it definitely knocks you out of your rhythm. Because you hit, you walk to it, you kind of think about it, you hit again, and you go. There in particular is a hole, then you’re around a stretch there that can get a little bit quirky with different shots and stuff, so you have to be on it. It definitely knocked me out of rhythm I felt like for the next two, three holes. I was kind of chasing my tail, because I’m trying to speed up and trying to keep us or get back in position, and at the same time you’re obviously trying to win a golf tournament. So it’s like at that point in the week it’s kind of a hard balance, yeah.”
Case In Point
Funny enough, the stretch of the next 2-3 holes Fitzpatrick referenced in his answer, he was clearly out of rhythm, looking back on it. Hole 12, he missed the green just short, resulting in an up-and-down par. Hole 13, he missed the green just long, resulting in an up-and-down par. On hole 14, he went wide left off the tee, got back in position, only to miss just short again, resulting in another up-and-down par. That 4th hole, hole 15, he hit his first green in regulation and made a massive putt for birdie.
I think the point I’m trying to make is that these guys know their games better than most people can ever even dream of. Something as simple as a slow-playing partner can be just as important in trying to win a golf tournament as the winner’s actual play.
What’s Next?
Well, for Fitzpatrick, we will not see him until The Masters, April 9-12.
As for the PGA Tour, they head to Houston this week for the Texas Children’s Houston Open.
