Matt Fitzpatrick walked into the Truist Championship press room at Quail Hollow on Tuesday with three wins on the season, two of them in his last two starts. The 2022 U.S. Open champion arrives as the form player on the PGA Tour heading into next week's PGA Championship at Aronimink — and the technical work with coach Mark Blackburn that fueled the streak is, in Fitzpatrick's own description, deceptively simple.
"It's become a game of opposites," Fitzpatrick said. "I get a little bit too upright, so I know I need to be more over. I get the handle high, so I need to make sure it's a little lower."
Those tweaks — posture and setup, not in-swing manoeuvres — are what allowed the changes Fitzpatrick adopted with Blackburn shortly before last year's PGA Championship to take hold so quickly.
"I've always been one for once I've got a feeling I can ride it out," Fitzpatrick said. "It's not like I'm having to move the club into some crazy position that I've never done before. So because it was posture stuff and setup, I feel like it's easier to maintain."
The result, by Fitzpatrick's own metric, is a player who has cleared even his 2022 major-winning form. Asked whether he is the same player he was when he won at Brookline, Fitzpatrick was direct.
"My DNA is definitely different," he said. "The makeup of my game at that point was great driving — really, really good. I was long and straight. I'd say now I'm driving it just as well, maybe not quite as long, but just as straight, if not straighter. And my irons are another level above. So that combination alongside me putting well, which has always been a strength, is a nice mix."
He has won three times this season, with each victory delivered down the stretch — final-hole heroics at Valspar and Phoenix and a playoff over Scottie Scheffler at the RBC Heritage. The Englishman attributed the closing-hole conviction to a single mindset.
"The biggest thing is I back myself in those moments," Fitzpatrick said. "I don't feel overawed by the situation or who I'm playing against. We're all just people at the end of the day. I want to be in those moments and take advantage of them."
Quail Hollow itself, Fitzpatrick admitted, is a course he is still learning. He played here at the 2017 PGA Championship — "a complete blur" — and again at last year's PGA, where he tied for eighth despite, by his own count, not hitting the 18th fairway once all week.
"I'm really kind of shocked at how firm the greens are right now," he said of this week. "That's definitely going to make it a great test."
The Sunday rough, he noted, is shorter than last year's PGA Championship setup, but the surfaces are tighter, and the same back-pin runoffs that have always defended Quail Hollow are even more punishing in firm conditions.
Asked about partner Alex Smalley, who Fitzpatrick has helped through swing-coach changes with Mike Bury, the world No. 3 was direct on the transformation.
"His driving was probably always a weakness in the past — it's become a strength," Fitzpatrick said. "He was first off the tee last week. If you'd said that to me three or four years ago, you just never would believe it."
If Fitzpatrick keeps the same Mark Blackburn checkpoints — "I get the handle high, I need to make sure it's a little lower" — and the same closing-hole conviction, a fourth title in 2026 is well within reach. Aronimink, where he tied for eighth last May, looms next.