Matt Fitzpatrick says his putting has let him down as he has been unable to carry his sparkling PGA Tour form into the first two majors of the year.
The 31-year-old is one of the most in-form players in the world in 2026, racking up three PGA Tour wins – including beating Scottie Scheffler to win the RBC Heritage – as well as finishing second at the Players Championship.
That form has made him one of the favourites for the Masters and the US PGA Championship but he has been unable to contend at either, finishing tied-18th at Augusta and battling back to a tie for 14th at Aronimink Golf Club last week.
The Sheffield star, who finished on a high in south-west Philadelphia with a final-round 65, knows that it is work on the greens which has held him back.
“I played pretty solid at the Masters tee-to-green and just didn’t make any putts there,” Fitzpatrick told the Press Association.
“And here (Aronimink) it was the same thing. (Sunday) I shot five-under, bogey free and played basically the same as I did the first three rounds.
“I made some putts and that’s the difference. In the most perfect of worlds, I’d do the same thing and I’m stood here at 20 under par. But that’s not the way the game is, is it?”
Fitzpatrick plans two weeks off ahead of his next event at the Memorial Tournament in Ohio, before switching his focus to next month’s US Open – a title he won in 2022.
Much talk at Aronimink centred around the challenge posed by the greens. Most pundits seemed happy with the setup the PGA used, with former Ryder Cup captain Paul McGinley among those pleased to see the players put to the test in what proved to be a thrilling tournament.
But that was not the view shared by some of the game’s leading names, as world number one Scheffler said some of the pin placements were “absurd” and the “hardest I have seen on tour”.
Rory McIlroy questioned whether the bunched nature of the leaderboard was due to “not a great setup” and Fitzpatrick echoed their views.
“I know there’s already been a lot said about the setup. I think I would agree with it all,” he added.
“It’s just one of those golf courses where I think if they put the pins where you them in practice, then I think the scoring would be drastically different.
“The greens are what protect this golf course, so they obviously had to use that to their advantage.
“The PGA used that to their advantage to set it up to how they wanted to present it.”
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