So, you stroll up to the Open Championship, especially if you’re Matt Fitzpatrick, a bloke with three recent wins under his belt and a game that screams "major champion," and you expect, well, glory. Royal Birkdale, all charmingly brutal and windswept, seemed like the perfect stage for his coronation. Instead, the golf gods, who clearly have a twisted sense of humor and a fondness for making finely honed players look like they’re swinging with oven mitts, decided to throw a curveball. Or maybe it was just the course being drier than a stand-up comic’s wit.
Fitzpatrick, who swears he didn’t hit a single “shoddy” shot (and who am I to argue with a man who just missed the cut?), got unceremoniously punted from the tournament before the weekend even bothered to show up. Four over par. The cut line vanished like a free drink at a corporate outing, leaving him marooned on the island of “better luck next time.” His post-round grumbling, delivered with that quintessential British stoicism that often masks a boiling kettle of frustration, wasn’t about his swing. Oh no. It was all about the fickle finger of fate, that capricious mistress who apparently decided to play favorites with everyone else’s ball.
“You need to have that rub of the green sometimes, and I didn’t have it this week,” he was heard to mutter, a sentiment I’ve personally used to explain why my drive ended up in the azaleas instead of the fairway, or why my putt slid past the hole after hitting a rogue ladybug. The course, apparently drier than a forgotten cracker, offered no helpful bounces, only the kind of strategic nightmares that lead to sand traps and double bogeys.
His story paints a picture of golfing purgatory: hitting shots with the precision of a Swiss watchmaker, only to have the ball decide it wants to explore the local flora or, in one particularly infuriating moment, have a bush leap out and personally slap his 6-iron away. You see, when a links course decides it’s not your day, it doesn’t matter how gracefully you execute your driver swing. Sometimes, all you can do is offer a silent prayer for a kindly bounce, a plea that, for Fitzpatrick this particular Friday, went unanswered.
The drama, if we can even call it that without sounding like we’re selling tickets to a Shakespearean tragedy, apparently peaked on the par-four sixth and the par-three twelfth. A tee shot into the rough, a flier lie, and then a tango with some shrubbery resulted in a bogey. Then, a tee shot that lacked the gumption of a true contender, finding a bunker face rather than the welcoming green, led to a double bogey and, pretty much, an express ticket home from his major championship dreams.