Golf is a demanding and successful day job, but football is former US Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick’s sporting passion – to the extent that he wants to work in the game.
It may happen one day but for now, digging his way out of the biggest slump of an otherwise glittering golf career has been the 30-year-old’s priority.
It has been a difficult and emotional process, but proof that he is back came with a career-best tie for fourth at last month’s Open.
He was the leading UK golfer that week on the Antrim coast and it was a fine way to end the men’s major season.
Even more so given where Fitzpatrick’s game was when it began at April’s Masters.
The previous month he had missed the cut at the Players, parting company with caddie Billy Foster – with whom he won the 2022 US Open.
This miserable early spring confounded expectations, after taking time to reset his career following a disappointing 2024. He felt ready to contend again, but his game remained in disarray.
“I just didn’t have it,” Fitzpatrick told BBC Sport. “I’d put in a tonne of work, my coaches had put in so much work and it just didn’t happen.
“There’s no stone left unturned for me, but it’s hard when you’re intending to hit a shot and missing it by quite a lot. I just didn’t know what was coming.
“And that’s when confidence hits an all-time low and you feel like you can’t progress.”
By the end of the Masters, where he finished in a share of 40th place, the former world number six was 75th in the rankings.
He was not sure what to do to arrest the decline. And sometimes stuff happens away from the course as well.
Such vicissitudes contributed to what had been previously unthinkable – splitting with Mike Walker, his coach and confidante since Fitzpatrick’s mid teens.
Walker works alongside fellow South Yorkshireman Pete Cowen and helped his protege win the US Amateur in 2013 before turning professional.
“My relationship with Mike is more important than golf really,” Fitzpatrick said. “He’s someone I’ve looked up to since I was 14 or 15.
“I could tell him anything and my respect for him is so high. At the same time I wasn’t playing well and things probably needed to change.
“It’s my job and I needed to get myself together.”
The week after the Masters, Fitzpatrick started to work with the Alabama-based coach Mark Blackburn.
“It was the first time I’ve ever had anyone look at my swing, or get a lesson off someone not named Mike Walker or Pete Cowen in 15 years,” Fitzpatrick said.
Blackburn wanted to know his new pupil’s physical capabilities and his level of flexibility. They soon discovered Fitzpatrick possesses unusually long arms.
“Which is not great for hitting irons because its harder to control the depth of the club, and you are going to hit it heavier more often than not,” he said.
“The other thing was I don’t have great shoulder flexion and because of that, as soon as I swing it too long I come out of posture and my swing is all out of whack.”
While finishing 11 under par at Portrush it was noticeable that before every shot Fitzpatrick would pull back his shoulders and push out his chest.
“It’s me trying to pinch my shoulder blades together,” he said.
“It is basically to create the radius of my arms, which means I can just rotate there and I don’t need to stretch or move my arms.”
The work is paying off. Fitzpatrick was eighth in May’s US PGA at Quail Hollow, one of five top 10s since the Masters – including finishing fourth at the Scottish Open the week before Portrush, and a share of eighth at the Wyndham last Sunday.
Now he is looking to push to finish top 30 on the PGA Tour and grab a place in the season-ending Tour Championship in Atlanta. He currently lies 41st and competes in the first play-off event, the FedEx St Jude, which starts in Memphis this Thursday.
Asked who he credits for helping him through the toughest stretch of his career, Fitzpatrick says: “My mum and dad and wife Katherine.
“She was constantly reminding me that I won the US Open; ‘you’re a great player, you’re going to get it back’.
“It really is true, you’ve got to have the right people around you and I feel very lucky that I’ve always had that.”