NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. — It’s a rough challenge, starting a major championship in the opening pairing with a tee time of 6:45 a.m., but Alex Fitzpatrick is just fine with it. He’s in the field, after all, and that’s something he wouldn’t have even dreamed a month ago. Playing in your debut PGA Championship, briefly leading the tournament, with your brother also in the field … hey, does it get any better than that?
Every day’s a good day when you play golf for a living, but these days are especially good for the Fitzpatrick boys of Sheffield, England. Matt, the 2022 U.S. Open champion, is on a legendary run of victories. Alex, the younger brother, just earned his PGA Tour card, thanks in part to Matt.
As storylines for a major held in the City of Brotherly Love go, it’s tough to beat this one.
Alex, who teed off more than seven hours before Matt, started his PGA Championship with two straight birdies to briefly take the early lead. Aronimink bit him on his way in — two bogeys and a double to see him finish at 2-over 72 — but still, a solid start to a debut tournament.
“I got off to a nice start and then I really didn't feel like I played that bad,” he told Yahoo Sports after his round. “Thursday, so there's a lot of golf left. Plenty of time left.”
Leading the PGA Championship — even for just a moment, even when almost no other players were on the course — is just the latest in a charmed run of victories, triumphs and lifetime moments for Alex.
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“It's all just a whirlwind for me still,” he told Yahoo Sports earlier this week. He’d just finished playing a practice round with Brooks Koepka, as one does. “I'm just trying to soak in every moment and make the most of it and try and play with a smile on my face.”
It’s not hard, given the run that both Fitzpatrick brothers are on right now. Born in England, the brothers attended college in America — Matt (briefly) at Northwestern, Alex at Wake Forest — and both sought to carve their way upward through the world of professional golf.
Their playing pedigrees were easy to spot even at an early age. Matt, older by more than four years, was a distinguished amateur, playing well enough to earn a spot in the 2013 Open Championship at just 18 years old. He made the cut and won low amateur for the tournament, then turned pro after playing in the U.S. Open next year. He posted a T7 finish in his first Masters as a pro, in 2016, and he was named to the European Ryder Cup team for the first time that same year. In 2022, he won the U.S. Open at Brookline … and then hit a long lull.
Alex Fitzpatrick (L) and Matt Fitzpatrick embrace on the 18th green after winning the Zurich Classic of New Orleans 2026 at TPC Louisiana on April 26, 2026 in Avondale, Louisiana. (Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images) (Chris Graythen via Getty Images)
Alex, meanwhile, took a slower route up through the amateur ranks, playing at Wake Forest for four years, as opposed to his brother’s one quarter at Northwestern. A fixture on Europe’s Walker Cup team, Alex rose as high as No. 4 in the world amateur rankings. He turned pro in 2022, and qualified for the Open Championship in 2023, where he beat Matt by four strokes. But then he, too, entered a long stretch of grinding golf, playing on the European Tour.
Everything changed for the brothers earlier this year … or, more precisely, they changed everything for themselves. The first sign that the tide was turning in their direction came at the Players Championship, where Matt came up just short against Cam Young. The very next week, he won the Valspar Championship for his first victory in nearly three years. Then, seven days after that, Alex won the Hero Indian Open for his first professional victory. After the Masters, Matt took down the mighty Scottie Scheffler to win the RBC Heritage, and the Fitzpatrick Spring was in full effect.
But all that was just prelude to the Zurich Classic, and specifically, the final hole on the final day of the Zurich. The Fitzpatrick brothers entered the team event, and leaped out to a four-stroke Sunday back-nine lead. But the lead winnowed down to nothing, and on the 18th hole, Matt stood in a bunker knowing they needed to get up and down for birdie to avoid a playoff, or worse.
The shot Matt made … well, have you ever done anything this nice for your brother?
Alex tapped in for the birdie and the win, giving himself an instant two-year exemption onto the PGA Tour. That’s about as wonderful a gift a brother can give.
“To hit it the way I did and to finish where it did to make it the most stress-free tap-in of all time, pretty much, for such a big occasion,” Matt said after the round, “was really, really nice.”
“I thought I was going to miss the putt, stood over it, even though it was so short,” Alex said. “I couldn't feel my hands, couldn't feel my legs, couldn't feel anything.”
This is golf, and that means there are critics — specifically, those who groused that Alex shouldn’t get a precious two-year exemption for winning an event where his brother did literally half the work. It’s a reasonable critique … one which Alex immediately dispelled by finishing T9 and solo fourth at his next two tournaments.
Now the brothers will embark on a journey few siblings have ever done before, working their way around the PGA Tour slate. Each one laughs that it’s an interesting switch for weekly questions to be directed to Matt about Alex, rather than the other way around.
“I love talking about my brother,” Matt said Monday. “It's an amazing position to be in, to have that privilege to talk about how well he's doing.”
Plus, there are other benefits to having a sibling on Tour, too.
“It's great, especially for him, because now most things (like lodging) are half-price,” Alex joked. “But no, I haven't spent as much time as I would like with him over the past four, five, six years. I'm just extremely excited to be able to spend more time with him, get much closer. We'll be out here every week, which is nice.”
“He is messy, I would say,” the famously fastidious Matt revealed earlier this week. “We shared a bathroom last week, actually, in the house that we shared, and it was a little bit messier than my side of the bathroom, I'll say.”
So now the Fitzgerald brothers roll into the PGA Championship. This time last year, Matt was ranked 85th in the world — he’s now fourth — and Alex was coming off a T17 finish in the Turkish Airlines Open in Antalya, Türkiye. What a difference a year makes.
This week, the brothers are literally at opposite ends of the tee sheet. That means they’ll both need to make the cut in order to catch a ride to the clubhouse, to say nothing of a weekend pairing.
“Only the past couple of years have we taken a step towards competing against each other,” Alex said. “Hopefully at some point we'll come down the stretch of a tournament together.”
Given the way the spring of 2026 has gone for the Fitzpatrick brothers, don’t bet against it this weekend.
“I'll be really honest, I think with everything that's gone on in the past couple of weeks I don't really know what's going on,” Alex said after his round. “I'm still trying to live the dream and not wake up yet.”
