Simpson stretches lead at Players to 7 after 68

BROOKLINE, Mass. – Matt Fitzpatrick keeps meticulous tabs on his career, charting every shot he takes, but stats can’t explain everything. Not in golf, and especially not at The Country Club. This is where Francis Ouimet, a 20-year-old amateur who grew up across the street, beat two of the world’s best players at the 1913 U.S. Open. It’s where Ben Crenshaw’s 1999 Ryder Cup team trailed 10-6 and he said, “I’m a big believer in fate; I have a good feeling about tomorrow.” His words preceded a record-setting comeback by his squad. RELATED: What’s in Fitzpatrick’s bag? On Saturday night, with a share of the lead and preparing to go into the biggest round of his life, England’s normally soft-spoken Fitzpatrick, who won the 2013 U.S. Amateur at The Country Club with his kid brother, Alex, on the bag, delivered a line that was so Crenshaw-like with portent the only thing missing was the pizza shirt. “I certainly think it gives me an edge over the others, yeah,” Fitzpatrick said of the long-ago week that kick-started his career. “I genuinely do believe that.” Like Crenshaw, he was right. On the same turf where he experienced the awakening of his career, he savored another, grander victory, carding a final-round 68 to win the U.S. Open by one over Scottie Scheffler (67) and Will Zalatoris (69). It was Fitzpatrick’s first PGA TOUR win, and he becomes the 13th player and first non-American to win the U.S. Amateur and U.S. Open. He’s also the second, after Jack Nicklaus at Pebble Beach, to win both at the same course. “I love playing this golf course,” said Fitzpatrick, whose masterstroke was a birdie from just outside 48 feet at the 13th hole, eliciting a Tiger-like upper-cut amid the roars. “It suits me so well. It suits my game well. I’ve been playing well for a while, and I think it all just fell into place that this was the place it was going to happen.” Zalatoris, who lost playoffs at the Farmers Insurance Open (Luke List) and PGA Championship (Justin Thomas) earlier this season, and who also was seeking his first TOUR win, had a birdie putt on 18 to force a playoff, but it burned the left edge. Billy Foster, Fitzpatrick’s caddie who had never won a major, tugged his cap down over his face. Fitzpatrick hugged him before moving on to his mother, brother, and father. He laughed and wiped away tears. “It’s a long week,” he said. “I said to Billy going up 14, I said, ‘Billy, I hate this. This is horrible (laughter).’ And up to that point really, I’d really not missed many shots. “I can’t tell you how happy I am it’s over,” he continued, “but at the same time, I can’t tell you how happy I am, how well I’ve grinded out there and how well I played. It means so much.” Fitzpatrick’s 17 top-10s without a win were the most on TOUR since the start of the 2019-20 season. Zalatoris, with 16, now moves to the top of that list. Fitzpatrick is the first player since Danny Willett at the 2016 Masters to notch his first TOUR win at a major. Was it force of habit? Fitzpatrick has twice won the Omega European Masters in Switzerland, twice won the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai, and now twice won on this hallowed turf outside Boston, which grew blustery and decidedly chilly for the weekend rounds. Or was it fate? The relationship between a player and a golf course can mean more than meets the eye. Jon Rahm captured the 2021 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, the site of his first TOUR win and not far from the hiking trails where he proposed to his wife. Similarly, Fitzpatrick summoned his old magic from 2013 this week in part by staying with the same host family, Will and Jennifer Fulton, and their three kids, Sam, Annabelle and George. Susan and Russell Fitzpatrick, Matt’s parents, and kid brother Alex stayed there, too, just like nine years ago. “We each took the same bedrooms,” Susan said, adding that she, too, is a big believer in fate. Then again, there were some new wrinkles. “Matt had a chef from Sheffield who’s been with us for a couple of tournaments,” Susan said. “There’s so much work that goes into golf; I don’t think anybody quite realizes. I’m not a numbers person at all. It amazes me how he does it.” Although he had been at Brookline all week, Alex Fitzpatrick, who played for Wake Forest before turning pro – he will play in the Irish Open in two weeks – flew home on Saturday. Alas, by the time he landed in Charlotte, North Carolina, and drove 90 minutes to his off-campus pad, big brother had shot to the top of the leaderboard, tied with Zalatoris. Determined not to miss the moment, Alex woke up at 5 a.m. Sunday and flew back to Boston. “There’s two ways you could look at it, really,” he said, when asked if there was something fated about Matt Fitzpatrick and The Country Club. “At the start of the week people were expecting him to go out and win because of what happened in 2013. You could take it as pressure, who knows how it’s going to go, but he stayed calm and had a good game plan. “I didn’t think I would cry, but I ended up crying,” he added. “That’s going to look bad on TV. I’ve said for a long time he deserves one more than anyone I can think of. If I showed you how hard he works and the things he does to get better, it would blow your mind, honestly. I guess there is such thing as golf gods, but for it to happen here is extra special.” The final hurdle for Fitzpatrick, having driven into the fairway bunker on 18, was clearing the lip that had thwarted Jon Rahm the day before. He took out a 9-iron and caught the ball flush, clearing the lip and pelting the green for a two-putt par. Fitzpatrick still looks like a kid, which is to say he doesn’t look all that different from the player who won here in 2013, with the exception of the logos and maybe a few extra pounds. If you’re a certain type of dewy-eyed dreamer, you can still squint at Matt and Alex and see Ouimet and his own kid-caddie, Eddie Lowery, in 1913. But that’s certainly not how Matt Fitzpatrick would explain this week. He charted all those shots, got longer off the tee after watching others bludgeon courses into submission, and drew on the lessons learned from being in the final group Sunday at the PGA Championship last month, when he tied for fifth. That The Country Club felt like home was the final puzzle piece. Same town. Same course. Same bedroom. “Know where to hit it; know where to miss it,” he said. “Yeah, just happy to be unbeaten around this place.”

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It started with a tweet. Curtis Strange was up late one night at his home in Morehead City on the North Carolina coast. He couldn’t stop thinking about the destruction left by Hurricane Florence last month. Trees down everywhere. Floodwaters that still hadn’t receded. Blue tarps covering homes that no longer had roofs. Families that had lost absolutely everything. Strange felt helpless. “Honestly, I’ve been through many hurricanes, but this one was the worst for me,â€� he says. “You want to help because you have power, you have a house, a roof above your head and so many don’t.â€� So he took to Twitter to tell people he was going to use his house as a distribution center. Send cleaning supplies and toiletries and paper towels and rubber gloves. Strange would make sure the boxes got to the relief effort. Please just open your hearts and help. Strange even included his home address in the tweet. “My son gave me hell the next day,â€� Strange says with a chuckle. “I said, you know, it’ll take you 60 seconds to find everything about me on Google. So what difference does it make?â€� Three days later, boxes started arriving. Sometimes a dozen a day, sometimes 20 or more. All of which Strange loaded onto the bed of his truck or into the back of the SUV and took to the distribution center at the First United Methodist Church. “It’s been overwhelming,â€� Strange says. Almost every time a shipment came, the two-time U.S. Open champion would take pictures of the boxes left on his front porch and tweet it out. It was his way of saying thanks to the many, many  strangers who heeded his call.  Strange and his wife Sarah actually weren’t in North Carolina when the storm hit. Six months earlier they had made plans with friends to go trout fishing in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. So they “battened down the hatches,â€� Strange says, and headed west – and not too long afterward mandatory evacuation orders came for Morehead City. “It was hard to relax and enjoy yourself when you’re watching this thing bear right down on your community,â€� he says. Florence made landfall near Wrightsville Beach, which is about 90 miles south of Morehead City, at 7:14 a.m. ET on Friday, Sept. 14. The unwelcome visitor, which had maximum sustained winds of 90 mph, lingered for days, sucking up moisture from the Atlantic Ocean and moving slowly east, causing massive flooding across the eastern part of the state even weeks later. Strange wasn’t able to get home until the following Tuesday. All the nearby airports were closed so he had to fly into Charlotte and then take a circuitous route to get home, finding back roads that would let him skirt the many flooded areas. While Strange and his wife were in Wyoming, friends sent photos of their home and it appeared to have escaped relatively unscathed. As it turned out, there was significant water damage to the ceilings and drywall. Strange knows he was lucky, though. “Two houses from me, they’ve gutted the entire house and so mattresses, their sofas, their chairs, their belongings are in a pile of rubble in front,â€� he says. “That hits home, when you don’t have a place to lay down.â€� The fury of the storm became strikingly evident the day after Strange got back from Wyoming when he ventured over to Morehead City Country Club. “There were 30-inch diameter oak trees or bigger and pine trees that were actually twisted because tornadoes coming through there,â€� Strange says. “The debris was just like a war zone. … “Mother Nature, man, she wins every time, she really does.â€� Strange and his wife eventually canceled a trip to Paris for the Ryder Cup. The 63-year-old, who played on five teams and captained the 2002 U.S. squad, says there were just too many things to take care of at his house where workmen were visiting almost daily. “You can’t go over there and enjoy yourself and be a part of something like that knowing that you have mildew growing at home,â€� he says. As he got involved in the relief effort, Strange marveled at the first responders and other volunteers who saved so many lives and are now helping to put them back together again. “It’s been so overwhelming and people forget about where do these people stay?â€� Strange says. “They’re sleeping in the fire station, on the concrete floor. They have cots put up in these kind of homes away from home, tented villages. “These people work in 19-, 20-hour days to get power on and help people and it’s been amazing.â€� Some semblance of normalcy is slowly beginning to return to the eastern part of North Carolina. But this is just the beginning. It will be months before homes are repaired and rebuilt. Although boxes occasionally still arrive, the makeshift distribution center at the Strange household is now closed. Instead, he refers people who want to help to the Red Cross and Salvation Army. When told he should be proud of what he’s done, Strange doesn’t hesitate. “I didn’t do anything,â€� he says. “I put out a tweet and people are very, very generous and I can’t thank them enough. “They’ve helped so many people. They just don’t know how much a box of supplies, how far it goes. And I think we all think the box, I just won’t do it. It’d be a box. “Well, it all helps and when you start piling them up in the church and see what they’re doing — it really makes a difference.â€�

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Here are nine tidbits from the third round of the Wells Fargo Championship that gamers can use tomorrow, this weekend or down the road. Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte has been the host since the creation of the event in 2003 and plays 7,544 yards to a Par-71. The 2017 WFC was played at Eagle Point Golf Club in Wilmington, NC. PAIN OR GAIN These were the top-10 picked golfers in the PGA TOUR Fantasy One & Done presented by SERVPRO: What a difference a day makes. Quail Hollow Club played over 220 yards shorter on Saturday and obviously easier than the first two rounds. The top four players listed above turned in an aggregate score of 19 under par and all worked themselves back into contention. The No. 8 player on the list above is sitting pretty. Final Paring Jason Day is looking to match Lucas Glover as the only winner to place all four rounds in the 60’s, as he’ll tee it last with Nick Watney in Round 4. The Aussie matched Friday’s 67 with another in Round 3 to post 10 under par and lead by two. Day hasn’t played this event since 2012 when he collected T9 cash. His win at Torrey Pines earlier this season combined with his three opening rounds (69-67-67) suggests he’ll be ready tomorrow regardless of course setup. Watney has now cashed in 11 consecutive weekends with the best of the bunch T20 his last time out on his own ball at the Valero Texas Open. It will be interesting to see how the once “young, up-and-comer” handles the spotlight in the final group with a major champion. Record Course Racking up seven birdies and an eagle against zero bogeys, Peter Uihlein threw down the gauntlet from the morning group that started at +2. He sent the message to the field that scores were out there and the course was ripe for scoring. I’m calling his 62 the new course record as nobody has posted a lower score since the redesign of the opening holes. The toughest thing to do after posting a low round is backing it up with another one. It’s even tougher on Sundays. He made three birdies in the first two rounds. Caution. Back in the Saddle After breaking a streak of cuts made too long to count at the RBC Heritage, Paul Casey has jumped right back into form this week. He also has posted his first three rounds in the 60’s, but a deeper dive shows his hot club this week is the putter. A ball-striking stud that I’ll be watching to see if the flat stick can keep up the pace as he’ll start Sunday three shots back. Lurking Before the week started, it was near impossible to fade Phil Mickelson as he has collected the second-most cash in this event over the years. It’s almost comical that he hasn’t found a way to finally get his hands on the trophy. He’ll begin Sunday five shots behind but his putter and irons finally fired in Round 3. He led the field in Strokes Gained: Putting and was second in proximity on a day where he signed for a bogey-free 64. Big Boy Golf Most gamers have eyes on Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy each week they’re in the field and this week isn’t any different. McIlroy said after the round he’s not comfortable with his game at the moment. If seven birdies and two bogeys is the downside, I’m riding him all the way to finish line tomorrow. As I wrote yesterday, when he came from behind to win in 2010 he posted 66-62 on the weekend to raise the trophy. His 66 on Saturday is the first part of that exacta. … Woods FINALLY threw up a pair of streaks that looked like he’s making birdies again. He circled three in four holes on the front (Nos. 5 thru 8) before seizing momentum with a turkey on Nos. 13-15 on the inward nine. Of course a three-putt bogey on the final hole brought us all back to reality. He’s T31 and nine shots back and will need something special in Round 4 to justify his selection. Moving Day Canadian Adam Hadwin hasn’t MC in 12 tries this season but gamers haven’t seen him since his last top 25 (T24) at Augusta National. His 65 moved him to T11 as he looks to carry his streak of T24 or better to six consecutive events. … Chesson Hadley will cash for the sixth time in as many events tomorrow evening and will look to extend his streak of T20 or better to five in a row. His 66 moved him up 32 spots to T16. Moving Day: Wrong Way Peter Malnati opened Round 3 in the final group but his 75 dropped him to T16. His best finish in the last two years on TOUR is T18, so he’ll be looking to keep it together for one more round. … Sam Burns needs 80 FedExCup points to gain Special Temporary Status. On the best scoring day of the event he joined Malnati as the only two players inside the top 39 who posted scores in the black on Saturday. He dropped 24 spots to T31 and the pressure on the 21-year-old must be something. He’s been in this column enough to take notice for future endeavors. Study Hall With 87 players making the 36-hole cut, MDF took place after Round 3. The big-name victims included Adam Scott (sigh), Hideki Matsuyama and Keegan Bradley … Round 3 played the easiest of the week at 70.368, down from 72.500 in Round 2. Yet, there were only four, bogey-free rounds, the same amount as Round 2. Talor Gooch (66) and Luke List (67) joined Mickelson and Uihlein in a very elite club. … The winner tomorrow, if not already qualified, will take the final spot in the field of THE PLAYERS Championship next week. … Justin Thomas will become World No. 1 if he can finish T11 or better. He’s T31 after using Rickie Fowler’s putter the last two rounds.  

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