Aged 27, the 18th player in the world is the seventh golfer in history to achieve such a performance, after Orville Moody (US Open 1969), Paul Lawrie (British Open 1999), Shaun Micheel (PGA Championship 2003), Michael Campbell ( US Open 2005), Louis Oosthuizen (British Open 2010) and Danny Willett (Masters 2016).
Fitzpatrick had already won this competition as an amateur in 2013, on this same Country Club. Eleven big names in golf have achieved such a double, but only the legendary Jack Nicklaus has done it like him on the same course, that of Peeble Beach in California.
Author of several spectacular putts, Fitzpatrick beat in a thrilling final, with a better shot, the Americans Scottie Scheffler, world No.1 winner of the Masters in April, and Will Zalatoris (14th) who still fails in second place a month after the PGA Championship.
The winner, from Sheffield, who had finished 5th during this same Grand Slam round, his best result so far in a tournament of this category, was first at the start of this last round.
He was as solid as he was patient, making an impressive putt of about fifteen meters, which birdied at N.13 to come back up to Zalatoris.
Then at N.15, he came out magnificently from the rough, the tall grass, enhancing his approach with a putt that was hardly obvious but controlled. Meanwhile Zalatoris cracked by committing a bogey.
With two shots ahead, three holes from the end, Fitzpatrick did not crack nervously when his rival, but also Scheffler returned to one unit after birdies, succeeding the par on the N.18.
He totaled -6, definitive proof after four laps that this demanding course did not allow itself to be tamed by the plateau, since only eleven competitors finished in par.
