In the Shadow of a Major-Champion Brother, Alex Fitzpatrick Is Making His Own Path
HOYLAKE, England — When Alex Fitzpatrick finished his 36th and last hole in the final British Open qualifier earlier this month at West Lancashire Golf Club, it was with a smile and the feeling that a weight had been lifted off his shoulders.
For the first time, Fitzpatrick would be playing in a major championship and to add a little frosting on top of the Hoylake cake, he would be playing in his first major with his older brother, Matt.
That's the same Matt who won the U.S. Open at The Country Club outside Boston, where the Fitzpatrick boys burst on the scene at the 2013 U.S. Amateur.
Matt was No. 2 in the World Amateur Golf rankings, the 2012 British Boys Amateur champion and low amateur at the 2013 Open Championship, so at 18 he was a seasoned golfer when he came to Beantown. His little brother Alex, just 14, was his caddie for 36 holes of stroke play and victorious matches against Gerrit Chambers, Blake Morris, Gavin Hall, Adam Ball, Corey Conners and Australian Oliver Goss in a 4 and 3 final.
“Kind of almost lost for words,” the younger Fitzpatrick said after qualifying on July 4. “I feel like I've worked pretty hard for a long time and haven't felt like I've gotten a lot out of the work I've put in ... today was just a lot of patience. And I managed to stay calm.”
Alex Fitzpatrick (right) teamed up with brother Matt at this year's Zurich Classic of New Orleans, finishing T19.
Andrew Wevers/USA TODAY Sports
The older brother has been a font of knowledge for the younger, but success hasn’t come as easily for Alex, who played at Wake Forest and was on the 2019 and 2021 Walker Cup teams for Great Britain & Ireland along with getting to No. 4 in the world amateur rankings before turning pro in 2022.
Since then, he's had some starts on the DP World Tour but has mostly played on the Challenge Tour, with some success including a ninth at The Challenge presented by KGA in India in the spring, a third at B-NL Challenge Trophy in May and a fourth at the Italian Challenge Open at the beginning of July.
Fitzpatrick is 23rd in the Road to Mallorca and needs to finish in the top 20 to earn his DP World Tour card for next year.
”If you've missed the cut, you don't get anything and if you've even just made a cut, you're still losing money,” Fitzpatrick said of the Challenge Tour. “So, it's hard, professional golf is hard. And I think people don't quite understand that.”
Fitzpatrick talked about the grind of traveling—Italy one week, Spain the next and then France, making professional golf at his level a little more difficult than on the PGA Tour or DP World Tour, the ultimate goal.
“I personally love it,” Fitzpatrick said. “I think it's great. Having the chance to play for trophies and move yourself up to different tours, I think is great.”
The joke at the U.S. Amateur was how good Matt was off the tee and on the greens, but how his younger brother was a better iron player and having an envious short game.
In the 10 years since then, that has not changed.
“Polar opposite to me because I'm statistically a great driver and a great putter, so he struggles with the driver and struggles with the putter,” Matt Fitzpatrick said of his brother’s game. “So, it's so funny how we are basically polar opposites in golf and off the golf course, but he's getting there he's definitely improving working with Mark Blackburn. And I'm so pleased for him that he qualified it's gonna be a great week for us.”
Blackburn is part of the traveling circus of professional golf teachers who works with many players including Max Homa, who was paired with the Fitzpatricks in April at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans team event on the PGA Tour.
“I've seen a lot of his action, and it's really pretty,” Homa said.
Homa went on to say that while Alex is long off the tee, the beauty of his game is the short game.
“Chipping around the Zurich is so hard,” Homa said. “He made some look really easy. Then yeah, they obviously have some good golf in their genes, but he's an impressive player.”
The gene issue is interesting, with the older brother cracking the code at the tender age of 21 and winning in his second year as a professional, beating a quality field at the British Masters at Woburn Golf Club. That has amped up the expectations on the younger brother.
So, on top of all that comes with becoming a professional golfer, the younger brother has an extremely successful older brother.
"It's a very difficult topic, it’s something I've dealt with since I was young and I'm not going to sugarcoat it at times, it's pretty hard," Alex Fitzpatrick said. “You get like random messages with people saying 'oh, you're not as good as your brother.'"
Fitzpatrick fends the critics off and at the same time clears up any thoughts about any division between Matt and himself.
“I love my brother to death as my brother and obviously as a fantastic golfer and I would never change it for the world, but people expect you to do a lot of things and I think it's hard to sometimes live up to that,” Fitzpatrick said. “But you make your own path. And I feel like I'm on the way to doing that.”