Alex Fitzpatrick leads the Truist Championship after a strong performance, while Cameron Young, his former Wake Forest teammate, is close behind following a 63 in the previous round.
Key points
Alex Fitzpatrick leads the Truist Championship.
Cameron Young shot a 63 in the previous round.
Fitzpatrick recently won the Hero Indian Open.
Fitzpatrick also won the Zurich Classic with his brother.
Young won the Cadillac Championship by 10 shots over Fitzpatrick.
Mentioned in this story
PGA Tour
Alex FitzpatrickCameron YoungTruist ChampionshipCadillac Championship
Cameron Young and Alex Fitzpatrick overlapped one season at Wake Forest, in 2018-19. Young was a senior, Fitzpatrick a freshman, but Young asserts Fitzpatrick was too good to make carry his luggage or anything like that. Instead, Fitzpatrick quickly became a fixture in the Deacons’ starting lineup alongside Young, a mentor and friend.
“I have nothing but good things to say about Cam,” Fitzpatrick said. “He kind of really looked after me.”
“I didn't think he was thinking he would see me in the next two weeks,” Fitzpatrick said of last week’s Cadillac Championship and this week’s Truist Championship.
Watch the final round of the Truist Championship at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, N.C.
Fitzpatrick fired a 7-under 64 Saturday to move to 14 under, a shot clear of Kristoffer Reitan, who was part of one of the runner-up teams at the Zurich. Playing in the penultimate pairing is Young, who is two shots back after a third-round 63 and is chasing his third win of the year.
Young’s day could’ve been better had he not bogeyed the par-4 finishing hole, where he drove it into the right trees and had to chip out, missing out on a chance to tie Rory McIlroy’s course-record 61. While he called his speed on the greens “awful,” Young managed to only drop that one shot. He added seven birdies and an eagle at the par-5 seventh hole, where he hit 7-wood out of the left fairway bunker from 238 yards to 28 feet and made the putt.
“The lip prevented me from starting the ball at the hole, and then I had some trees on the left to kind of deal with,” Young said. “It's not an easy shot with a 7-wood out of a bunker. If there was ever a number, it was perfect it was that one.”
Young birdied five of his first seven holes on the back side, including from over 40 feet at the par-4 16th. He’ll play Sunday alongside Nicolai Hojgaard, who shares fourth at 10 under with second-round leader Sungjae Im (70).
Justin Thomas, Tommy Fleetwood and J.J. Spaun are tied for sixth at 9 under, while Rory McIlroy followed a 67 with a 75 to plummet to T-37 at 1 under.
They are all chasing Fitzpatrick, who led last week’s field in strokes gained off the tee before pacing this week’s field in strokes gained approach. Fitzpatrick credits his ball-striking to the work he’s done with his instructor, Mike Walker, Matt’s former longtime coach whom Alex started working with last October.
But as for explaining why he’s looked so comfortable in just two weeks as a full-fledged PGA Tour member, Alex points to his brother.
“Having my brother around has been super helpful,” Alex said. “I feel like he's been and done everything that I want to do in the game, whether that's Ryder Cup and win majors, so having him being around and me being there for all of that, I felt like I got a really good sense of what it takes and what the atmosphere is like. And even meeting some of the players before I even came out here was, I think, super helpful in settling in. I think that definitely played a factor today.”
The 27-year-old Fitzpatrick went out in 5-under 30, highlighted by a back-to-back darts to 3 feet, at Nos. 2 and 3. While he missed a 12-footer for par, failing to get up and down from the greenside bunker at No. 16, he bounced back by canning an 8-footer for birdie at the par-3 17th.
“I felt like I read the greens well today, but 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.”
When Fitzpatrick tied for sixth at the Joburg Open a few weeks before his triumph in India, he thought in the back of his head that he might never get another chance to win again.
Now, he’s had several and already converted two.
He can pull off another – and easily his biggest – on Sunday at Quail Hollow.
“It would obviously mean a lot,” Fitzpatrick said. “I feel like over the past six months I've always tried to have the mindset of there are other things in life than golf. You know, I would love to win. I would give a lot to win. Also, 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.”
