It felt inevitable.
Scottie Scheffler had spent Sunday chasing down Matt Fitzpatrick, who had expanded his lead to four shots with a birdie on the first hole of the final round at the RBC Heritage.
The lead sat at one entering the 72nd hole at Harbour Town Links and Fitzpatrick finally blinked, failing to get up and down for his first bogey of the day to send the tournament to a playoff.
Scheffler had the advantage after the tee shots, 18 yards ahead of Fitzpatrick, with both players in the fairway.
That’s when Fizpatrick, though, hit the shot of the tournament — a laser 4 iron from 204 yards that held its line against a strong right-to-left wind and ended 13 feet past the hole.
Still, Scheffler had a chance to match, and it wouldn’t have been shocking to see the world’s No. 1 player do just that.
Instead, Scheffler ballooned his second shot from 186 yards out, and the wind annihilated it — the ball landing a shocking 37 yards short of the green.
“Way, way, way back. Way back,” a shocked Jim Nantz said on the CBS broadcast.
Scheffler was able to pitch the ball to 8 feet, but Fitzpatrick rolled in his birdie putt to clinch the victory and earn the $3.6 million first-place prize at the Hilton Head, SC course.
It is the second straight week that Scheffler finished runner-up after ending one shot behind Rory McIlroy at The Masters.
“In both weeks I put myself behind the 8-ball going into the weekend and had really nice Saturdays and Sundays in order to get myself into contention,” said Scheffler, who took home $2.16 million for second.
“On Sunday it’s a shot here or there that makes a difference. This was one of those weeks where anytime Fitzy needed something to happen, he made something happen. He definitely earned the win, and he just played great golf.”
It was Fitzpatrick’s second win of the year after taking home the Valspar Championship last month and the second time he has won this tournament, beating Jordan Spieth in a playoff in 2023.
“It was quite funny that the playoff was just going to keep playing on 18. I was thinking it was going difficult in a way to separate ourselves because it’s such a difficult hole,” Fitzpatrick said. “To do it how I did was special.”
