Two weeks ago, Matt Fitzpatrick helped his brother Alex earn his PGA Tour card through 2028 with their dual victory at the Zurich Classic pairs event.

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This week at the Truist Championship in Charlotte, they’ll play alongside each other as full-time PGA competitors for the first time at Quail Hollow Club.

For Matt, who has much more PGA Tour experience while Alex was playing full-time on the DP World Tour until his Zurich victory, the 31-year-old feels an obligation to take his brother, who is four years younger, under his wing.

“Definitely. I think it would be wrong of me not to (play practice rounds) with him and help him out as much as I can. He’s been thrown in the deep end straight away and it’s all happening very fast so I feel like I have an obligation to help him too,” Matt Fitzpatrick said. “I’ve already said to him, ‘If you don’t want that, you can tell me to mind my own business.’ I don’t want to feel like I’m getting involved in all these decisions and stuff, that’s his thing. I just kind of want to offer my two cents, if you like, and see where it goes.”

Alex did plenty well without his brother around last week at the Cadillac Championship, finishing in a tie for ninth in his first event since earning his card.

Matt took last week’s signature event off after winning consecutive events the prior two weeks at the RBC Heritage and Zurich. While it was a week away from golf, it was not the celebratory week off people may have expected given his impressive recent form.

“I spent last week at home in Florida with my wife and my parents. We had a little bit of off-course stuff to do with the house that I bought and stuff,” Fitzpatrick said. “I think that kind of occupied me for most of the week, which was nice to not have to think about golf for a little bit.”

Matt’s debut win on tour came at the 2022 U.S. Open and he followed with a 2023 win at the RBC Heritage. An extended drought without a title followed, though, as he went winless until this March’s Valspar Championship.

His three wins in a span of five weeks are more than he had in his first 11 years on tour combined, sending him surging up to fourth in the Official World Golf Ranking.

“My DNA is definitely different. The makeup of my game at that point in time was pretty much great driving of the golf ball, like really, really, really good. I was long and straight at that point. I hit my irons pretty well at that point too,” Matt Fitzpatrick said of reflecting on how his game has changed since his U.S. Open victory four years ago. “I would say now I feel like I’m driving it probably just as well, maybe not quite as long, but I’m driving it just as straight if not straighter and my irons are another level above. So I feel like that combination alongside me putting well, which has always been a strength in the past, is obviously a nice mix.”

Matt also has recent success at Quail Hollow, finishing in a tie for eighth at last year’s PGA Championship at the same course.

–Field Level Media

Louis Munteanu scored his second and third career MLS goals and short-handed D.C. United earned a 2-0 victory at New York City FC on Sunday afternoon.

Munteanu’s brace completed a third consecutive multi-goal performance after the Black and Red (4-4-3, 15 points) had failed to score in four consecutive league matches.

It came on an afternoon Tai Baribo, D.C.’s leading scorer with six goals, was unavailable because of a thigh injury, while attacker Gabriel Pirani was left out of the team in a coach’s decision.

Sean Johnson made four saves to keep his fourth clean sheet of the season, coming against his former club. That was enough to ensure D.C.’s first consecutive league victories of the season.

New York City (3-5-3, 12 points) held 65% of the possession, but failed to translate that advantage into chances as their league winless run extended to seven matches.

D.C. led 19-8 in overall shots and 7-4 in efforts on target.

Munteanu joined D.C. this offseason from CFR Cluj in his native Romania for a reported $7 million transfer fee, but had mostly been used off the substitute’s bench while the 23-year-old acclimated to a new league and culture.

But Baribo’s absence opened the path for a starting role in last weekend’s dramatic 3-2 victory over Orlando City, in which he scored an 84th-minute equalizer, and he got the nod again from manager Rene Weiler on Sunday.

His first goal came in the 29th minute on an instinctive finish from Jared Stroud’s long throw-in from the right.

The throw dropped in the area of teammate Kye Rowles and then appeared to take a deflection off an NYCFC defender. Munteanu reacted quickly to reach it inside the 6-yard box and poked a first-touch finish past goalkeeper Matt Freese (five saves).

Munteanu’s second came from the penalty spot in the 75th minute.

Referee Ismail Elfath whistled Keaton Parks for a foul on Lucas Bartlett, appearing to signal that Parks had grabbed Bartlett’s neck area.

NYCFC players protested, but replays showed no decisive angles that would’ve led to an overturn. Munteanu stepped up and finished coolly past Freese into the bottom right corner.

–Field Level Media

Nelly Korda didn’t take long to return to the winner’s circle, posting a final-round, 3-under-par 69 to win the Riviera Maya Open at Mayakoba by four strokes Sunday in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.

Korda continued her victorious ways at El Camaleon Golf Course seven days after capturing the Chevron Championship — the first major of the season and the third such title of her career — and returning to the No. 1 world ranking.

Korda entered the day with a three-shot advantage and wound up four ahead of Thailand’s Arpichaya Yubol (70). In third at 12 under was China’s Yu Liu (69), feel-good story Brianna Do (71) finished fourth at 10 under and Colombian amateur Maria Jose Marin (69) placed fifth at 8 under.

“I think it was a perfect week after a major championship, too, where it felt like it was super relaxing but I knew that I needed to grind and I was here to work,” Korda said. “… I’ve had such an amazing time. Yeah, I mean, emphasizing it with a win, at the end of the day that’s what I was coming here for.”

Korda’s only scoring stretch amid two runs of pars came at the fifth through seventh holes. She holed an eagle at the par-5 fifth, then birdied the next two for a 4-under run.

From there, it was 10 straight pars until cleaning up a bogey 6 at the 18th.

“I guess there (were) two parts to my round,” Korda said. “Definitely on my front nine I had my A-game, and then on the back nine I wasn’t playing bad; just wasn’t hitting it close. And then I was kind of cruising and then golf humbled me on the last hole. Made my (second bogey) on the weekend.”

Korda continued a thoroughly dominant season to this point. In six starts, she now has three victories and three second-place finishes.

“I’ve had some amazing moments in my career,” the 27-year-old said. “In 2024 I won five in a row and my fifth one was a major. So I’ve had — I can’t say that one moment in my career was the best. I think all of them have had a different meaning and all of them have been so great in different ways.

“I’m just happy to be competing out here healthy, motivated. You know, I’m so happy on the golf course. I’m happy off the golf course.”

Yubol brushed off an early bogey with birdies at Nos. 4 and 5, but her next eight holes were all pars and she ran out of time to catch up to Korda. A double bogey at No. 16 killed her chances despite three birdies in the last five holes.

“Normally when I play with like another player and they have like a big crowd, so my brain is kind of crazy a little bit, and sometime it’s too hard to like control your game and control your brains, anything,” said Yubol, who played on her 24th birthday.

“But this time, it’s kind of like, I don’t know, maybe it’s my birthday, too. Like I’m growing up; 24 already. Like I talk to myself like all the time. Like even I’m hit bad I’m still talk to myself, you can do it. You can come back any time. Just play your game and everything happen is happen.”

Do, 36, had one top-10 and zero top-five finishes in her LPGA career before this week. She was a co-leader after the first and second rounds but was still pleased with the end result.

“After last year, you know, going into it I believed that my best golf was still ahead of me even though I’m one of the older players out here, and I still believe that. It just showed this week,” Do said. “It’s hard to not get emotional, but I’m really proud of myself and how I played.”

–Field Level Media