Matt Fitzpatrick was the open favourite. You complain about bad links after a miss
Matt Fitzpatrick has been one of the best golfers in the world this year. He came into the Open Championship at Royal Birkdale with three wins under his belt in 2026 and was coming off a third game at the Genesis Scottish Open. Combine all that with his fourth-place finish at last year’s Open at Royal Portrush, and Fitzpatrick was one of the favorites to win the Open Championship.
But after consecutive rounds of 72, Fitzpatrick will miss the weekend at Royal Birkdale, finishing with a two-day tally of four over to miss his first cut of the season. After signing his scorecard, Fitzpatrick spoke briefly with the media, pointing to bad links—golf luck and not bad play—as the reason his senior season was coming to a disappointing end.
“You have to cover three or four holes for me,” Fitzpatrick said. “I hit some decent shots, I just got unlucky and came out four-over. That’s the way golf connects. You need to be on the green sometimes, and I didn’t have it this week.”
The England man has played practice rounds at Royal Birkdale over the past few weeks, but the course has dried up significantly since Fitzpatrick’s visit. The hard and fast conditions of the burnt Birkdale presented strategic questions which Fitzpatrick did not answer well in the first two days at Southport. Although he’s been getting longer off the tee in recent years, Fitzpatrick didn’t feel he had the length off the tee to avoid some of the more dangerous pot bunkers, forcing him to put back more times and rely on getting the right bounces when his ball lands. In the end, Fitzpatrick learned that those bumps never came. In fact, the opposite happened on Friday as he tried to lie.
“I didn’t feel like I hit a lot of bad shots all week.” Fitzpatrick reiterated. “It’s just a weird golf course when it plays like this. For me, I don’t feel like I have the length to take out some greens, and then you rely on bounces, and you can’t hit your 6-iron because of how hard the greens are. Yeah, it’s been played for a four or five, play one today and you’ve got it. That’s the way golf links are. It’s a lot of luck with pulling and rubbing the green.
Fitzpatrick’s second round began with birdies at the second and fifth along with a bogey at the fourth. Then, Fitzpatrick ran into trouble on the par-4 sixth. The 2022 US Open champion hit his tee shot into the rough and caught a layup flier on the second, sending the ball into the woods. He made bogey. Fitzpatrick threw another shot at the seventh when his tee shot hit the green but missed the putt, landing 30 feet from the pin. He hit his second shot 20 yards and missed the par putt. Fitzpatrick birdied 11 to get back within one cut, but his weekend cash crashed and burned minutes later. Fitzpatrick’s shot at the par-3 12th came up short and connected to the face of the green. Fitzpatrick tried to chip it, but his ball hit the face and bounced back into the bunker. He made a double bogey.
For Fitzpatrick, those few turns made up for a lost opportunity.
“It’s disappointing, but like I said, I didn’t feel like I played that bad,” Fitzpatrick said. “I hit three shots today that I hit the way I wanted, and one was in the woods about 30 yards. One was on the green for 15 seconds and then it went off the green, and that was another shot. Then I hit one a little bit lower than the normal number, and suddenly it’s 15 yards from the bunker. So I got four shots, and I hit the golf links well.
Fitzpatrick’s season was the best of his career. He says he even played better this year than when he won the Brookline Country Club and won the US Open. He won the Valspar, the RBC Heritage and the Zurich Classic with his brother, Alex. But he finished no better than tied for 14th in any major, and his senior season ended with a flurry of poor links and a brief stint at Royal Birkdale.
Whether it was bad luck or bad golf, Fitzpatrick kept up with the theme of English sports week by not bringing home the trophy he had been longing for.
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