first PGA Tour victories in Charlotte:<\/a> Anthony Kim (2008), Rory McIlroy (2010), Rickie Fowler (2012), Max Homa (2019) and Wyndham Clark (2023).<\/p>\nTechnically, even with a win on Sunday, Fitzpatrick would not make that list. But it would be his first PGA Tour victory without an asterisk, a type of win that shifts the conversation from exemption worthiness to PGA Championship odds.<\/p>\n
Somehow, Fitzpatrick doesn’t seem fazed by this hypersonic ascension, mature enough to say things like this.<\/p>\n
“I would love to win. I would give a lot to win,” he said. Then he added, “If winning doesn’t happen tomorrow, I would hope it would happen at some point. As long as I can go out and enjoy it, that’s all I can do.”<\/p>\n
He strolled around Quail Hollow on Saturday like a man at peace, a feat even more impressive considering he was playing with Justin Thomas (9-under), who shot 2-under Saturday. The champion here at the 2017 PGA Championship, Thomas is a crowd favorite in Charlotte. Yet, for every two or three chants of “J-T,” there was someone hollering out, “Go Alex!”<\/p>\n
It was quite a different reception than the one his brother received last month in South Carolina. It helps to hold a degree from a North Carolina institution.<\/p>\n
“The one thing that I kind of did a really good job of today was embracing everything that’s going on,” Fitzpatrick said. “I had so much support out there, which was amazing. Shoutout to everyone at Wake Forest.”<\/p>\n
Even when asked about the putting that helped him card eight birdies on Saturday, Fitzpatrick almost chalked it up to some cosmic force in the universe \u2014 as if a good night’s sleep powered him to a brilliant day.<\/p>\n
“For whatever reason, I felt like I woke up and was more comfortable than I was the first couple days,” Fitzpatrick said. “I’m hoping I can wake up tomorrow and be comfortable again.”<\/p>\n
If he does, golf may just have its best story of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alex Fitzpatrick has won on the PGA Tour in the same way you aced the group project. Yes,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19390,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[1679,685,531,144,1380,8098],"class_list":["post-19389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-truist-championship","tag-alex-fitzpatrick","tag-cameron-young","tag-pga-championship","tag-pga-tour","tag-truist-championship","tag-wake-forest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}