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BROOKLINE, Mass. — Will Zalatoris couldn’t resist taking a peek at Matt Fitzpatrick’s ball.
He and Fitzpatrick were walking toward their tee shots on the 18th hole of The Country Club. Madness was unspooling all around them. The U.S. Open was hanging in the balance. Thousands of rowdy fans had just spilled into the fairway, and now Boston police officers were trying — and failing — to keep the throngs behind the rope line. Fitzpatrick, clinging to a one-shot lead, tried to keep his head down as he navigated the fracas, but he still managed to get swallowed up by the crowd. It took three police officers to eventually clear a path for him.
Zalatoris marched on. Fitzpatrick’s tee shot was somewhere in the left fairway bunker, and Zalatoris wanted to know exactly what Fitzpatrick was facing with his approach. His own ball was in the fairway and he wasn’t sure if he needed a birdie or par to get into a playoff. What Zalatoris saw gave him a glimmer of hope. Fitzpatrick’s ball was nestled down in a shallow part of the bunker, partially blocked out by an island of rough. It would require a small miracle to get it on the green.
“I thought even going for it was going to be ballsy,” Zalatoris said. “It’s probably 1 in 20 — at best — to pull it off.”
Suddenly, a par might get Zalatoris into a playoff. A birdie might win the tournament outright. A mixture of tension and apprehension and excitement swirled in the air.
Fitzpatrick, when he finally arrived at his ball, saw it similarly. This was, to put it bluntly, a moment. Whatever happened next might haunt him or fulfill him for years to come. He talked over his options with his caddie, Billy Foster. He pulled a 9-iron and aimed a hair to the left. It was time to trust everything that brought him to this moment.
He took a few deep breaths, waggled the club several times, then stepped into the shot. It all happened so…
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Source : espn
