Matt Fitzpatrick was playing with a weight attached to his driver that he forgot was there for 12 months.
The Englishman felt more like “his old self” in the first round of The Players Championship, carding a 66 and this was helped by removing a four-gram weight from his Titleist TSi3 driver which he put on back in February 2023.
He discovered the long-lost attachment during a recent session of driver testing where he was told his driver was too long and the grip was too worn. Titleist regripped it, Fitzpatrick had his lightbulb moment and the weight was removed at the WM Phoenix Open last month.
“There was a weight in the grip, which we did some testing with in February last year, and never took it out,” Fitzpatrick said at here TPC Sawgrass.
“We were doing some testing to match up – I put weight in the grip of my irons, and it was successful for three, four weeks, and we thought, OK, well, let’s match it up with the driver, because I felt there was a bit of an indifference there.
“So we did, and then for whatever reason just forgot that it was ever in there. Yeah, took it out the week of Phoenix, and yeah – driver has felt completely different.
“I needed a re-grip of the driver,” he added. “The grip was so worn, it was like a training grip. Got it regripped at home. The guy that did it – I’m on the limit of how long my driver is.
“He put a little bit too much tape on, so it just bulked up the length, so it was too long. They said it’s too long. I took it to Titleist, they regripped it for me and they’re like, oh, you know there’s a weight in there, and I almost had a heart attack.”
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Even when Fitzpatrick removed the weight from his irons last March, the penny didn’t drop with the driver.
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Missing left off the tee became the common mistake, but now Fitzpatrick feels he can swing hard and be confident of his ball finding the short grass again.
The 2022 US Open champion missed six cuts last season but still managed to come tied for the ninth at the season-ending Tour Championship. However, he was 55th in strokes gained off the tee, whereas he ranked 10th in this department during the year of his major crowning moment at Brookline.
Admitting he was to blame as much as anyone else, Fitzpatrick did pick up victories at the RBC Heritage and the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship with the forgotten weight attached to his driver.
He maintains his long game deteriorated after winning at Harbour Town which led to confusion surrounding his swing and some “back and forth” to remedy his problems.
The 29-year-old is now in the thick of contention at the Stadium Course in Ponte Vedra, but who knows what might’ve been if just one person had thought of the swing weight.
“Maybe I’d have won four times if I had it out.”
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