USA Network
It appears Matt Fitzpatrick is not a fan of Royal Liverpool’s new No. 17. This was evident whether you asked him on the Monday before the tournament started or after the second round on Friday as well.
At the start of the week, the re-formed 136-yard “little eye” was a hot topic of conversation and Fitzpatrick may have started it when asked about it in his pre-Open press conference.
“Have you played the new 17th hole?”
“I have.”
“Your thoughts?”
“interesting.”
“any thing else?”
“I’ll leave it at that.”
Fitzpatrick could not resist a smirk as he bit his tongue. However, two days later, caddy Billy Foster wasn’t shy.
“There was nothing wrong with the little Level 3 they had before, and they created a monstrosity, in my opinion,” Foster said. golf per month. “The green is very small. If you land a short distance on it, it rolls into an underground coffin, very deep. This is a challenge for the best golfers in the world who will make 6s, 7s and 8s.”
Turns out one of the best golfers in the world who would make the par 6 hole was Chief Foster! embarrassed!
The 2022 US Open winner actually hit midfield and rolled in 22-foot birdie on Thursday, but Friday’s second round saw some carnage.
Playing only 132 yards, Fitzpatrick hit a long ball into the remaining natural sandy area and beyond the green. That’s when things got interesting.”
Like the monstrous pots’ bunkers around Royal Liverpool, even the sandy area behind the Green Turtle has a sharp, bent face, and Fitzpatrick’s ball has fallen on its edge.
After one attempt, the ball hit the face and he fell back down. The second attempt was no better, only this time, the ball lodged in a hole in the soft, undisturbed sand.
The 28-year-old looked up and sighed in disappointment.
Finally, his third attempt – and fourth – came off the clay, but hit a cliff and fed into the left dugout.
“Yeah, he’s not going to have anything good to say about this hole for the rest of his life,” analyst Brad Faxon said on the USA Network broadcast. “disaster!”
When Fitzpatrick hit his fifth shot—which happily ended up in the middle of the bunker, giving up a pin play—American analyst Paul Azinger had an opinion on Fitzpatrick’s sarcasm.
“Let’s face it, his first shot was terrible,” said Azinger. “If you hit a poor putt on the 17, like that, you’re going to pay the price. I think what they fear most is that they might hit a good putt and land it in one of these pots. But, that’s what makes it the scariest shot on the entire golf course, and we see a prime example of what these guys have to deal with comes this week.”
Fitzpatrick nearly holed his fifth shot and tapped it into a triple bogey. The Englishman had been devoid of a bogey until then, and was in first place in the Championship, in a tie for 13th, with two holes left in his second round.
The triple dropped him 29 spots on the leaderboard and to two places in the championship. He certainly wasn’t the first to score “another” in Little Eye – Lucas Herbert did when he was leading early in the first round – and probably won’t be the last.
Not only did Fitzpatrick request a par-tough save on the 18th to comfortably make the cut after 72 straight seconds, but he also evaporated his lead over his brother Alex. Playing in his first career major, Alex shot one under-70 Friday morning to also be the two-over for the championship.
The bet is that this will make for an “interesting” dinner conversation at the Fitzpatrick house.