The reigning U.S. Open Champion forced the playoff with back-to-back birdies down the stretch, getting up-and-down from behind the green at the par-5 15th, then hitting his approach on the par-4 16th to 5 feet. He closed in 4-under 68 to tie Spieth at 17 under. The pair halved the first two playoff holes, before Fitzpatrick’s final approach, on playoff hole #3, landed on the front of the 18th green, skipped and rolled to 12 inches.
Navigating the narrow corridors and small greens at Harbour Town, Fitzpatrick gained 10.945 shots on the field tee to green (ranking 3rd), with more than nine of those coming on approach shots (+6.197, 7th) and around the green (+3.162, 10th). With the win, Fitzpatrick moved from No. 16 to No. 8 in the Official World Golf Ranking, the highest position of his career.
– Of the top 14 finishers, 12 trusted a Pro V1 or Pro V1x golf ball – including the Top 3 and five of the Top 6: Fitzpatrick (Pro V1x), Spieth (Pro V1x), Patrick Cantlay (Pro V1x), Sahith Theegala (Pro V1) and Hayden Buckley (Pro V1).
• FITZPATRICK ON THE PERFORMANCE OF HIS PRO V1X: “There’s obviously so many different variables with a golf ball. I’ve always been kind of a lower flight player but I am kind of high spin so that’s where I feel like my game is at with the golf ball. To be able to rely on the golf ball and know that it’s gonna do what I want it to do – have a consistent flight, consistent spin with every shot that I hit – that’s so important. Having that ability to know what your ball is going to do rather than second guessing makes a hell of a difference and obviously makes you more comfortable. And from there you’re gonna hit better golf shots. I love the golf ball that I’m in, it just works perfectly for my game.”
“The reason [Pro V1x] is so good for me is feel, I like the harder feel off the club face. I just feel like the spin’s consistent, the flight’s consistent, and that’s what you need in a golf ball. You don’t need it kind of in different windows. It’s nice to have that consistency to have the confidence in the golf ball to know how far it’s going to go every time, and to be within a really tight deviation is obviously so important. This is a game of inches after all, the margins are so fine you want it to be as tight as possible. So that’s why I play Pro V1x because it’s exactly that, you know what you’re going to get every shot and you don’t get any strange effects from shots.
“You just know, hitting other golf balls, that as soon as you’ve hit it, it doesn’t have the same effect. I’ve messed around with balls on the range when they’ve been mixed into the Pro V1x bag that I always go to grab, and they just get funky flights. I don’t know how you can play golf with that, to be honest, and not knowing what you’re going to get from shot to shot.
“I feel like, for me, the firmer the ball is, the more I can control the spin. That’s always nice for me (with Pro V1x), knowing that I can increase spin, and take spin off it. That’s been the big thing. I know for a fact I can flight the ball easy, much easier, up and down, with the ball that I use.
“I’ve been Pro V1x ever since I was probably about 15. It was always the best ball. There was never anything else for me growing up, to be honest. That’s all I’ve ever known.”
