Fitzpatrick Brothers Target Second PGA Tour Win Together After Record Zurich Classic Round
Matt and Alex Fitzpatrick stand four shots clear of the field heading into Sunday's final round at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans after scorching TPC Louisiana with a tournament-record better-ball score of 57 on Saturday.
The English brothers, who claimed this event together in 2023, carded nine birdies and an eagle across their third-round 57 — the lowest better-ball total in the tournament's history — to open a commanding advantage over the chasing pack with 18 holes remaining.
The performance marks a dramatic reversal from 24 hours earlier. After 36 holes, the Fitzpatricks sat one shot off the lead held by joint-36-hole leaders Patrick Fishburn and Luke Guthrie. The shift from contention to control came as their ball-striking sharpened and their putting converted the opportunities the course offered.
The format of the Zurich Classic — a two-man team event played across both alternate-shot and better-ball rounds — rewards chemistry between partners. The Fitzpatricks have built that over years of amateur and professional competition, and it showed in the composure they maintained while building their score on the back nine. They picked up four birdies between the 13th and 17th holes, a stretch that effectively settled the outcome before Sunday's final tee time.
The question now is not whether the Fitzpatricks can convert their lead, but how they will manage the pressure of a wire-to-wire finish in a format that exposes every loose shot. The PGA Tour's stroke-play calendar offers no parallel experience — there is no other event where a player carries a partner's score, where a double-bogey by one brother cancels a birdie from the other. That unique pressure has produced surprises before. In 2022, the team of Sam Burns and Billy Horschel entered the final round with a one-stroke lead and won by five; in 2024, a different pairing mounted a final-day comeback that rearranged the leaderboard entirely.
Matt Fitzpatrick arrives at this moment with the sharper record in high-pressure PGA Tour finishes. The Sheffield-born 31-year-old won the 2022 US Open at Brookline, closing with a 68 in conditions that exposed several contenders, and has accumulated six career PGA Tour victories. His brother Alex, 29, earned his first Tour win at the 2023 Scottish Open and has competed regularly at the elite level without matching his brother's consistency. The pairing at the Zurich Classic is not the first time they have structured a season around each other — they played together at the 2019 Walker Cup at Royal Portrush, where Great Britain and Ireland defeated the United States for only the second time in three decades.
For the broader PGA Tour, the Zurich Classic represents one of the season's quieter storylines — a team event that lacks the narrative weight of the major championships but offers a different kind of drama. The winning margin, should the Fitzpatricks convert their advantage, will test whether four shots is sufficient cushion in a format where momentum swings are amplified by the team structure. The back-nine surge that gave them control on Saturday also served notice that other pairings in contention — particularly those within striking range — have the firepower to mount pressure if the brothers show any hesitation.
The Fitzpatricks will tee off in the final group on Sunday alongside a chasing pairing. Both sources covering the event heading into the weekend confirmed their position atop the leaderboard heading into the final round. Whether they finish by five or by one, their performance across the first three days has already separated them from the field in a manner that the tournament record will reflect regardless of the closing score.
Monexus covered the Zurich Classic with attention to the record-setting nature of Saturday's round and the brothers' position as defending champions, reflecting the tournament's significance as a PGA Tour team event.