SOUTHAMPTON, NEW YORK | First a question: Who has won the most tournaments on the PGA Tour in 2026?
The answer is not Scottie Scheffler, the world No. 1. Nor is it Rory McIlroy, the Masters champion and world No. 2.
It is in fact the quietly spoken Englishman, Matt Fitzpatrick, who was born in Yorkshire, a county said by legend to contain as many acres as there are words in the New Testament, and has achieved considerable success in the U.S. since. He may be the most understated player in the world’s top 10, his quiet, almost self-effacing demeanour matching a style of play that no one, not even his mother, would call thunderous.
Matthew Fitzpatrick is a thinking man’s golfer, one who has recorded every stroke he has ever hit and plots his way around a golf course as, say, Luke Donald or Zach Johnson, other thinking men’s golfers, used to. He first came to prominence in America by winning the 2013 U.S. Amateur. Nine years later he won the 2022 U.S. Open, the 13th man to achieve this double with, among others, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods and only the second man to do this at the same venue, in his case The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts.
If you think you are seeing double when you see the name Fitzpatrick, then rest assured, you are. There is no need to rush out for an eye test. Matt and Alex, his younger brother, are creating waves on the PGA Tour this year. The two of them won the Zurich Classic, which propelled Alex onto the PGA Tour where he has earned $3.6 million to date.
In March, Matt lost the Players Championship to a strong finishing Cameron Young, then won the Valspar Championship, beat Scottie Scheffler in a playoff for the RBC Heritage and now leads the FedEx Cup standings.
“We are very different,” Matt Fitzpatrick said of Alex at the Truist Championship earlier this year. “I kind of made the joke a few years ago that he’s the happy, bubbly one and I’m the miserable one, which kind of still stands, I guess. He’s definitely got such a great attitude. He’s always kind of bouncing, always so pleasant to be around, so nice to everyone … I think when it comes to his golf game … he’s way less analytical. He’s not really analytical at all compared to myself.”
Both Fitzpatricks honed their early golf at Pete Cowen’s famous golf academy outside Rotherham in Yorkshire where they came under the eye not only of Cowen, who now works with Brooks Koepka, but also Mike Walker, Cowen’s assistant.
Walker taught Matt for nearly 15 years before Matt moved on Mark Blackburn, the coach of the moment. Walker was working with Alex at the same time when Elizabeth, his wife, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2025 and died, aged 50, in March.
“I couldn’t have carried on coaching Matt at that time,” Walker told The Daily Telegraph. “I know Matt’s fiercely loyal to me but this isn’t his fault and he has to find another coach. To be honest I had a suspicion anyway that Matt could do with a second opinion and you can see how well he has gone with Mark Blackburn.”
“It was so difficult but I had to be selfish and think of my career,” the older Fitzpatrick told The Daily Telegraph. “Mike said I had to.”
Alex Fitzpatrick returned to being coached by Walker last October and has gone from strength to strength since then. After winning the Zurich Classic with his brother he came ninth in the Cadillac Championship and fourth in the Truist Championship.
Shinnecock’s nine outward holes, totalling 3,816 yards, are notable for the fact that having descended from the pulpit-like first tee you traverse land almost as flat as a pancake before ascending to the raised ninth green.
As befits brothers the Fitzpatricks are sharing a house this week but Matt only saw Alex for a few minutes on Thursday night before retiring to bed to be ready for his alarm call at 4 a.m. on Friday. Having finished his second round he was asked what he was going to do. Might he watch TV and look out for Alex? He smiled as if this was a silly question. “I’m going to watch the football.”
Fitzpatrick made his way around Shinnecock Hills in Friday’s second round in his usual unostentatious way, being outdriven by Bryson DeChambeau, a playing partner, by 100 yards on the 18th, yet outscoring him again and again.
Fitzpatrick’s 70, helped by sparkling birdies on two of his last three holes, gave him a 36-hole total of 137, 3-under par. DeChambeau’s two rounds were 70 and 75.
Had he had the time and inclination to ponder the question Fitzpatrick might have said that not only was it as perfect a day for golf as was possible, he was playing on one of the two best seaside courses in the U.S., the other being Pebble Beach Golf Links on the west coast. Pebble Beach will host next year’s U.S. Open.
Shinnecock’s nine outward holes, totalling 3,816 yards, are notable for the fact that having descended from the pulpit-like first tee you traverse land almost as flat as a pancake before ascending to the raised ninth green. From almost any point on any hole you can see the other eight. They are, furthermore, the stoutest of stout holes.
Those holes on the inward half are as different from the front nine as night is from day. Here the holes zig and zag in beguiling fashion, marram grass waving down the sides of many of them, and pitch and toss. Such are their undulations that the golfer playing them for the first time might have cause to reach for the anti-seasickness pills.
All of them, all nine, all 3,618 yards of them, are sturdy, redoubtable, testing and when blessed by a gentle breeze and a warm sun, as delightful as can be. A friend wrote to me earlier this week saying: “Shinnecock Hills is the one course when I get to around to the 13th hole I say to myself, ‘Why does this have to end?’”
For Fitzpatrick, 3-under par at the halfway stage, it did not have to end. Only Wyndham Clark, the 2023 U.S. Open champion on 7-under par, was ahead of him. There are still two rounds to go but Fitzpatrick the elder was well placed to make a run for his second U.S. Open title.