'It's Not A Massive Loss' - Fitzpatrick On BMW Championship Absentees

Matt Fitzpatrick has said that the second FedEx Cup Playoff won’t suffer from the absence of three of its top six finishers last year.

The 2021 BMW Championship saw Bryson DeChambeau finish runner-up with Dustin Johnson and Sergio Garcia tying for sixth. However, while the trio are ineligible for this year’s tournament thanks to their involvement in the LIV Golf Invitational Series, the US Open champion isn’t too worried about their absence. He said: “It's still an incredibly fantastic field. The field this week is 70 of the best players in the world. Yeah, I think only three of them that aren't here, it's not a massive loss in my opinion.”

Video: What Is LIV Golf?

The PGA Tour has lost several high-profile players to the Saudi-backed Series over the last few months. As well as the aforementioned trio, the likes of Patrick Reed, Paul Casey and Brooks Koepka have also opted to sign-up to the Series, which has triggered suspensions from the PGA Tour. Indeed, until last week, there had been a chance that three other LIV Golf players – Hudson Swafford, Taylor Gooch and Matt Jones – could have been reinstated to the Playoffs. However, their attempt to do so via the courts went against them.

That marked the latest in a series of controversial incidents involving LIV Golf, but Fitzpatrick insists that, as far as he’s concerned, the saga has not been a distraction. He said: “I'll be honest, I haven't been asked much about it myself personally. It's been fine. I've just seen it in the media and stuff. You just get fed up with talking about it. My personal opinion, it's like, right, let's just get on with it now. Just want to play golf and concentrate on what you're doing. Yeah, that's purely my take on that.”

That certainly appears to be the case. As well as claiming his first Major two months ago, Fitzpatrick also rose to a career-high World No.10 following that US Open victory. Fitzpatrick puts his success down to his preparation. He said: “I feel like I do my homework more than most. So I definitely feel like that's kind of -  that is a little bit of an advantage, yeah. It's always interesting to see how the holes play, even in practice, how the guys play, what he's hitting, what's he hitting, definitely looking around. I definitely feel like I do my bit of work more so than most, so definitely feel I've got maybe a bit of an edge here.”

Fitzpatrick is in pursuit of his first FedEx Cup triumph. He finished tied for fifth in last week’s FedEx St. Jude Championship and begins this week’s tournament 12th in the FedEx Cup standings.