There are few players in golf who think more about data than Matt Fitzpatrick. He's been manually tracking every shot he's hit since his college—and used that data to squeeze every bit of juice out of his game ever since. He's been wildly successful doing so. He won the U.S. Amateur in 2013, then the U.S. Open in 2022.
Now, he's taking that one step further. This month, Arccos, the Official Game Tracker of the PGA TOUR, announced that Fitzpatrick had joined the company as an investor. It's the latest move by the company that brought on stats guru Eduardo Molinari earlier this year.
Here's what Fitzpatrick had to say about it:
“I’ve always had a huge interest in the power of data and how it can help me play my best. That’s why I started to work with Edoardo Molinari and what drove me to use Arccos. After learning more about the company and meeting CEO Sal Syed, I’m thoroughly impressed by how much they've helped golfers make smarter decisions and shoot lower scores. On Tour we use the data to shave a fraction of a stroke so you can imagine the impact Arccos insights have for amateur players.”
Ahead of the PGA Championship earlier this month, Fitzpatrick shared one of those insights about his own game—and in doing so, revealed how fascinatingly tight the margins are at the top level of the game.
Two yards?!
Fitzpatrick had the best performance off the tee of his career in 2022. An offseason speed-training program meant that season, he gained more than 1.3 SG: Off The Tee, and ranked seventh on the PGA Tour.
This season, Fitzpatrick ranks 77th on tour in SG: Off The Tee. He's hitting it about just as far, but what changed? That's what I asked Fitzpatrick.
"When I was at my best driving it in '22, my dispersion pattern was 14 yards either side [of my target]," Fitzpatrick says. "This year it feels like I've driven it poorly and I'm 16 yards either side, so it's two yards either side."
Two yards. Not a big deal, right?
Wrong.
"It doesn't sound like a lot," Fitzpatrick says, "but one thing that I feel like I noticed last year that I said to Billy, my caddy was 2022, I felt like I had a lot of great tee shots where I'm like, oh, that's just held in the fairway. It is just crept in the fairway. It's on the edge this year. I always seem to be one yard in the rough. And that's the difference. Those are your two yards."
Some impossibly thin margins to navigate at the top of the game, but luckily, that's not the task for the rest of us. Our goal is much simpler: Get your ball in play. Do that, and you'll be coming out way ahead.