Matthew Fitzpatrick is the player who will be tasked with playing alongside Scottie Scheffler in the final group during the third round of The Open Championship on Saturday.
Scottie Scheffler has put himself on pole position to win The Open Championship after reaching the halfway stage at Royal Portrush at 10 under par.
It had appeared for a decent portion of Friday afternoon that it may be Matthew Fitzpatrick leading the way at the final major of the year. The Englishman played superbly to reach nine under par and move ahead of the likes of Brian Harman and Haotong Li.
The pair will be hoping to ensure that they are in the final group on Sunday, in stark contrast to when they played together in a FedEx Cup playoff event in 2024.
Why Scottie Scheffler was ‘very upset’ when he played alongside Matthew Fitzpatrick in a FedEx Cup playoff in 2024
The BMW Championship was certainly not Scheffler’s finest week last year. The world number one seemed to really struggle to get to grips with the change in elevation at Castle Pines. Scheffler stunned many fans with some fiery outbursts during the tournament.
He finished the week at one over par and in a tie for 33rd. And it seems that his frustrations did get to him during the final round, where he was paired with Fitzpatrick.
Fitzpatrick was at the centre of a controversial incident where he tried to have his driver replaced after the face cracked on Sunday. However, the officials decided to not allow the change.
Many fans at the time were baffled that Fitzpatrick could not change his driver. Meanwhile, speaking at the time, Smylie Kaufman noted that Scheffler was far from happy with the ruling.
“From my view, yes Fitzy was definitely adamant about there being a crack in his driver, but I had a chance to watch Scottie, he was very upset that it wasn’t going to be replaced and to the point, he was having long discussions walking up the fairway, complaining about how Fitzy should get a driver replaced,” he told The Smylie Show.
“And I asked Scottie about it in the fairway on nine, I was like how bad is he? He said, ‘well, you could see it, you could feel it, and then we just saw it on eight tee, his drive went 180 yards’.”
Scottie Scheffler may act a little differently if a similar situation arises at The Open Championship
From the outside, it appeared to be a really good opportunity for Scheffler to vent the anger which had built up across the week.
It would be interesting to see how he would respond if Fitzpatrick suffered a similar problem over the next two days.
You would imagine that Scheffler would still push for a replacement because he does not appear to be a win at all costs kind of competitor.
Unfortunately for Fitzpatrick however, Scheffler seems to be a lot more content with his game this week and has a lot less frustration to offload. So perhaps he would not be prepared to invest so much of his energy into any potential drama out on the course.
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