It’s a beautiful day at Innisbrook Resort’s Copperhead Course unless you’re Matt Fitzpatrick’s scorecard.
When Fitzpatrick, who tracks his every shot, reviews his first round at the Valspar Championship in Palm Harbor, Florida, he’s going to be none too happy when he gets to the par-4, 417-yard third hole. That’s where he made a nine.
Fitzpatrick started with a birdie at the first hole, but the nightmare at the third started on the tee shot, where his ball headed left and deep into the trees. Fitzpatrick reloaded and hit a beauty. But when he got down there, it turned out a fan located a ball that may have been Fitzpatrick’s. He didn’t want to check it and called a rules official to ask if he had to look at the ball. He was told he had to, and unfortunately it was Fitzpatrick’s ball. Given that he still had no swing even if he had taken an unplayable lie and he could no longer play his provisional since he found his original ball, he decided his best option was to return to the tee. He made the walk of shame back to the tee and re-teed, hitting three.
But it only got worse from there for Fitzpatrick, the reigning U.S. Open champion, as he hit his next shot into a lake. He dropped near the penalty area and his fifth shot landed in the rough short of the green and he needed two more chips to reach the putting surface. He missed a 13-footer for a snowman and tapped in for a quintuple-bogey nine.
Fitzpatrick went on to bogey the next two holes, too. Snakebit on Thursday and he hadn’t event reached the Snake Pit (holes 16-18) yet. Fitzpatrick ended up shooting 42 on the front nine but improved 10 strokes on the back nine to shoot 3-over 74.
It’s been a tough stretch for Fitzpatrick, No. 13 in the world, who missed the cut last week at the Players Championship, and has dug himself a hole that could lead to his third missed cut in four starts unless he gets his act together.
