Fitting Finish for Fitzpatrick

Derek Clements reports on the weekends action

European Tour British Masters Wrap Up

The future arrived at Woburn with a resounding thud at Woburn when Matthew Fitzpatrick knocked in a tiny bogey putt on the 18th green to win the British Masters, his first professional victory.

Fitzpatrick won the US Amateur Championship when he was just 19 years old, and most of us had never heard of him. That triumph saw him soar to the top of the world amateur rankings. Now aged 21, he still lives with his parents in Sheffield and, for the time being at least, drives a Ford Mondeo.

A measure of the quality of the field that Fitzpatrick beat is that the new world professional rankings will see him climbing from 111th to 60th place. He is £500,000 richer and, even though he remains a grounded and modest young man, even he admitted that the time may now have come to treat himself to a new car.

This win has been coming for a while. Fitzpatrick finished fifth in only his second professional event, the South African Open, and although he suffered a few missed cuts, he has had four top-three finishes in 2015. It was only a matter of time before he took the next step.

He began the final day tied for the lead on 12 under par with Kiradech Aphibarnrat, with Fabrizio Zanotti, Shane Lowry and the in-form Dane Soren Kjeldsen breathing down their necks. Fitzpatrick dropped a shot at the third hole and, for a while, it seemed that another opportunity may be passing him by.

This time, there was something different about his demeanour. This is a big tournament, played in England, and he was desperate to win on home soil, with the pressure on. His performance on the second nine was special. He birdied the 11th and 12th after stunning approach shots, should have birdied the 13th but saw an eight-foot putt lip out and birdied the par-five 15th after holing a magnificent 25-foot putt. For good measure, he put his tee-shot at the par-three 17th to four feet and holed that too. In the meantime Aphibarnat had started with back to back bogeys and also threw in a double-bogey for good measure. Kjeldsen three-putted the 15th and also paid the price for a couple of errant drives, Zanotti dropped shots at crucial times and Lowry ran out of holes.

Fitzpatrick came to the last with a two-shot lead and split the fairway. With adrenalin pumping through his veins, his second shot cleared the green and finished in a bunker. He took three more to get down but, with Zanotti also dropping a shot, it meant Fitzpatrick had won by two, with a 15-under-par total of 269.

"I am thrilled to have won this event," he said. "The fans were just unbelievable all week, cheering me onto every green and encouraging me all the way. The course was in magnificent condition. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that my first victory would come in such an important tournament, played in England."

Almost 58,000 paying spectators came through the gates to watch a tournament that was blessed with good weather. For Fitzpatrick, this is the first of many such wins. Make the most of him while you can because he will surely be heading to the PGA Tour sooner rather than later. And mark my words, this is a golfer who will win majors.

He will also have already set his sights on making the European Ryder Cup team next year, where he will come face to face with many of the USA team who recorded yet another victory in the Presidents Cup.

Presidents Cup Team USA Hold out for Victory

Team USA went into the final-day singles leading the Internationals by a point, and early in the day it appeared that they were going to romp away with it at the Jack Nicklaus Course in Incheon, South Korea.

But in the end, the entire match came down to the final singles game between Bill Haas, son the USA captain, Jay, and Sang-moon Bae, playing in front of an adoring home crowd. Bae played some remarkable golf throughout this contest but finished weakly, hitting a poor chip to the last and then missing a putt that saw him concede the game and the entire contest to the USA. They won 15.5-14.5. And to compound Bae's misery, he now must serve two years in the South Korean military, just like every other South Korean male.

Haas Sr said: "I told Bill, 'come on son, win this one for your Mom. You Mom deserves this.'We put him out last but obviously I had no idea that this would happen. I couldn't even have dreamt it up."

Haas,Phil  Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Zach Johnson and Chris Kirk all won their singles ties for the USA, while Adam Scott, Hideki Matsuyama, Mark Leishman, Steven Bowditch and Branden Grace all won for the Internationals. Two matches were halved.

It is a sixth successive victory for the USA and the ninth win in the 11 contests since the event began. Remarkably, Mickelson has played in all 11 matches and produced some miraculous recovery shots to defeat Charl Schwartzel. The best encounter was the one between the irrepressible Patrick Read and South Africa's Louis Oosthuizen, who traded birdies all day long.

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