Matt Fitzpatrick flubbed a chip on the seventy-second hole of the RBC Heritage Sunday afternoon, allowing Scottie Scheffler to finish one shot better on the closing stretch and force a playoff. [1] Fitzpatrick and Scheffler returned to the eighteenth tee. Scheffler, hitting second, fanned a 6-iron thirty-seven yards short of the pin. Fitzpatrick hit a 4-iron from 204 yards into a stiff breeze to thirteen feet. [2] The ball cleared the bunker. It rolled past the pin. Scheffler's pitch to eight feet was excellent but moot. Fitzpatrick made the putt. The Harbour Town crowd that had chanted "U-S-A" through four hours of final-round golf quieted. [1] Fitzpatrick won the RBC Heritage for the second time in five years. [2]

The victory is the second consecutive week in which Scottie Scheffler, the world number one, has finished second to a European at a PGA Tour signature event. Rory McIlroy beat him at the Masters by one shot on April 12. Fitzpatrick beat him at the RBC Heritage on April 19. [3] At Augusta, Scheffler opened with a second-round 74 and closed with a third-round 65 to get within four; he finished with a 67 and lost by one. At Harbour Town, he opened with 68-67 to sit seven shots off Fitzpatrick's thirty-six-hole lead, shot 64 Saturday to get within three, and posted a 67 Sunday that forced a playoff he then lost. Two weeks. Two runner-up finishes to Europeans. The world's best golfer has not won a PGA Tour event since The American Express in January.

What Fitzpatrick did at 18

The shot Fitzpatrick hit to thirteen feet on the first playoff hole is, in his own language, a 4-iron into the grain of a par 4 whose green has two receiving bunkers short and a grandstand behind. [4] It settled past the flag at a distance closer than almost every approach hit to the eighteenth in regulation all week. Fitzpatrick's caddie, Billy Foster, said after the playoff at the 2023 Heritage that a Sunday gallery chanting for Jordan Spieth felt "like a Ryder Cup out there." Sunday at Harbour Town in 2026 was thicker. The crowd, allowed onto the fairway short of the eighteenth green in regulation, chanted "U-S-A" at Fitzpatrick from the bank. He quieted them with the 4-iron. His reaction after the winning putt was to touch his finger to his right ear — a gesture of acknowledgment without confrontation, the kind of reply Cameron Young's victory over Fitzpatrick at THE PLAYERS had taught him to hold. [2]

"It was quite funny that the playoff was just going to keep playing on 18," Fitzpatrick said afterward. "I was thinking it was going to be difficult in a way to separate ourselves because it's such a difficult hole. To do it how I did was special." [2] The 2023 Heritage playoff, against Jordan Spieth, went three holes, and Fitzpatrick ended it with a 9-iron to a foot on the eighteenth. The 2026 Heritage playoff went one hole, and Fitzpatrick ended it with a 4-iron to thirteen feet. Each of the two victories is his only PGA Tour win at Harbour Town. No foreign-born player had ever won the Heritage twice before Sunday. [4]

Scheffler, runner-up

Scheffler, speaking in his post-round interview, said: "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. 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." [2]

The pattern Scheffler described — weekend recovery from a slow start — has been his year. He ranks 81st on the PGA Tour in strokes gained approach, the category in which he ranked first in each of the three previous seasons. [5] His scrambling around Harbour Town was remarkable; he made eight-for-eight in short-game up-and-downs through the back nine Sunday. But eight-for-eight scrambling produced a 67 and a playoff, not a win. The world number one is now runner-up in two consecutive weeks at two different tournaments to two different Europeans, and the operating question for the next fortnight is whether the pattern extends a third week or breaks at the Zurich Classic or the Wells Fargo Championship that follows.

Ludvig Åberg, the twenty-seven-year-old Swede who was Saturday's pre-framing favorite for the Sunday run, closed with a 71 for his seventh final-round of the season that did not improve on a starting-day score. [4] He finished T5 at twelve under. The paper's subject memo on Åberg carries a second data point: the Sunday finish problem is now structural.

What Sunday adds

Fitzpatrick moves to a career-high world ranking of number three after a run that includes a T2 at THE PLAYERS, a win at the Valspar Championship, and Sunday's Heritage. [6] He has earned roughly $8.3 million in his last four starts. [2] Nick Faldo was the only Englishman to win the Heritage before Sunday, in 1984. Fitzpatrick is now the second Englishman to win it twice, the first being never — no one, of any nationality, had won the Heritage twice as a non-major foreign-born player. The Heritage plaid jacket, which he first won in 2023 and wore on the cover of a March 2026 Golf Digest feature, is now his twice.

The back-to-back European winners over Scheffler do not constitute a trend yet. McIlroy was McIlroy at the Masters. Fitzpatrick is a U.S. Open champion who has now shown twice in five years that Harbour Town's Pete Dye design, requiring shaping and creativity rather than power, favors the game he has built. What Sunday does mark is the first time in this cycle that the world number one — a player whose 2024 season included seven PGA Tour wins and the Masters — has finished second in back-to-back starts, both to non-American players, at two of the biggest events on the spring schedule.

Rory McIlroy chose to skip the Heritage this year, citing the post-Masters travel. He remains the number-two ranked player in the world. Scheffler moves to Quail Hollow next month for the Wells Fargo Championship the PGA Tour has moved up the calendar in anticipation of the 2027 PGA Championship. What Scheffler does at Quail Hollow is the third data point the pattern needs either to confirm or to close. What Sunday confirmed is that the gap at the top of men's golf, which had looked like Scheffler's to keep through 2026, is no longer uncontested.

-- AMARA OKONKWO, Lagos