Matt Fitzpatrick speaks to the press at St. Andrews ahead of the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship. | Photo by Ross Parker/SNS Group via Getty Images
Ahead of this week’s Dunhill Links at St. Andrews, Matt Fitzpatrick expressed his dismay for golf’s current state of affairs.
Matthew Fitzpatrick did not hold back at the Home of Golf on Wednesday.
Speaking ahead of this week’s Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, of which he arrives as the defending champion, the 2022 U.S. Open winner fielded a question about the prospects of the PGA Tour and LIV Golf coming together. After all, 14 LIV players will tee it up on the DP World Tour this week. Commissioner Jay Monahan and PIF Governor Yasir al-Rumayyan are also in the pro-am draw and will even play alongside one another in round one. Hence, this topic of re-unification has become a pertinent discussion.
“In terms of bringing the game together this week, I’m past the point of caring. I just don’t care,” Fitzpatrick said.
“Me saying things to the PGA Tour board, me saying things to the DP World Tour board, it’s not going to change, so why am I going to waste my time talking about it.”
Fitzpatrick then continued to give his blunt assessment of the current situation.
“If I’m brutally honest, at the start, I probably was pretty against it, and it was not of any interest to me to go and play LIV. But I’ve always said that I understood why people went. I’ve got no issues with that. No issues at all,” the Englishman said.
“My issue was always, at the start, anyway, is you’ve gone over there. Like, I don’t feel like it’s fair for you to try and come back and play, as well. But I would say I’ve changed that now. Again, I just don’t care. I just want to focus on myself. I think that’s what’s most important, if I try to play the best golf I can. I don’t want to get ten years down the road, obviously, and look back, I’m not going to sit there and think, oh, I wish I’d got more involved in that LIV and PGA Tour. It’s like, you’re wasting your time.”
That said, as an avid Sheffield United fan and a supporter of English soccer overall, Fitzpatrick offered a candid solution to pro golf’s schism.
“My idea would be you have basically a Premier League, championship league, of golf, whether LIV is the Premier League or PGA Tour is the Premiere League, whatever it is, and then you can bring everyone together. And there’s more of a relegation/promotion; there’s a few more stories there, and you can work your way up. If everyone was together, I feel like that would be more beneficial,” Fitzpatrick explained.
Photo by Richard Heathcote/Getty Images
Matt Fitzpatrick during a practice round at St. Andrews.
“But as a big football fan, there’s got to be more stories in the regulation/promotion rather than personally what I think there is now. I know LIV is a closed shop, and they have a team aspect, which, as a football fan, I love team stuff. The Ryder Cup is amazing. All that stuff is great. So I’m not fully against the team aspect but if it a closed shop there’s not too many story lines in there. But at the same time, the PGA Tour is becoming a little bit more like that. What formats are they going to do?
“Is there a 70-man field? I don’t know. There’s people that are smarter than me are involved. I’m very happy that Andy Cohen and the Strategic Sports Group are involved in the PGA Tour now. They know how to run businesses and know what to do, and they are smart people, smarter than me, and I would say smarter than the majority of the PGA Tour players and golfers.”
Fitzpatrick alluded to the PGA Tour’s new Signature Event structure, which features elevated purses and limited fields. It’s the whos-who of the PGA Tour, the top players competing side by side. But they have also created two circuits within the tour: those at the top and those who are not. The top 50 players from the previous year’s FedEx Cup standings qualify for all eight Signature Events in the proceeding season, leaving 20 spots up for grabs for other players. The Aon Next 10 and Swing 5 have done an adequate job determining who joins these elite fields, but they are still much different from what most PGA Tour events used to consist of: 120 players with more storylines and opportunities for younger and journeymen players.
Those full-field tournaments still exist, but numerous top players skip many of them, curating their schedules around the Signature Events.
“I think the game of golf is very individual, and you’ve got to be selfish,” Fitzpatrick added.
“If you want to be the best you can, you’ve got to be selfish, and I think the thing that always makes me laugh is, you know, the best players do what is best for them, and I feel like sometimes they get unnecessary heat for it when they do what they think is best for them and what makes their life easier and what makes their life better and what they can achieve more. That is, for me, what’s important.”
No wonder why Fitzpatrick does not care. He can only focus on himself, especially during this period of golf history that is so volatile and hostile, while the future of the sport remains up in the air.
Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. Be sure to check out @_PlayingThrough for more golf coverage. You can follow him on Twitter @jack_milko as well.
