Why just about anyone but Rory can win Charlotte’s PGA Tour event Sunday
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- Alex Fitzpatrick leads Truist Championship at 14‑under-par after shooting a 64 Saturday.
- Eight players are within five shots of the lead heading into final round Sunday.
- Rory McIlroy shot a 75 on Saturday at Quail Hollow and is 13 strokes behind the leader.
The Truist Championship sports a tightly bunched leaderboard, a field of potential storylines and a couple of former Wake Forest teammates near the top as it heads into a Sunday ripe with possibility.
The fourth and final round of Charlotte’s annual PGA Tour stop will begin Sunday with Alex Fitzpatrick, mostly unknown and without a PGA Tour card less than a month ago, leading the pack.
Fitzpatrick has had a Cinderella run both here and in the last three weeks, helped along by his well-known older brother Matt. A golfer who is from England but went to college at Wake Forest, Fitzpatrick shot a 64 on Saturday and sits alone at 14-under, one stroke ahead of Norway’s Kristoffer Reitan.
“I would love to win,” said Alex Fitzpatrick, who didn’t even have a PGA Tour card three weeks ago. “I would give a lot to win. Also, if winning doesn’t happen tomorrow, I would hope it would happen at some point. As long as I can enjoy it, that’s all I can do.”
In third place, at 12-under, is Cameron Young, who sizzled to a 63 on Saturday. He teamed with Fitzgerald at Wake Forest for one season — Young was a senior and Fitzpatrick a freshman. “He’s a great kid, and it’s great to see him playing well,” Young said.
Did Young make Fitzpatrick carry his luggage as a freshman? “No, nothing like that,” Young said. “He was too good to be doing any of that kind of stuff.”
While Fitzpatrick has long played in the shadow of his older brother Matt, Young is the No. 3 player in the world and won last week’s tournament by six strokes. “I’m playing great,” Young said. “There is not a ton going on in my head, which is, I think, a very good thing.”
Meanwhile, you can forget about Rory McIlroy winning for a fifth time in Charlotte.
McIlroy, the No. 2 player in the world, has won this championship a record four times and holds the course record with a 61 that he shot in 2015. But his Saturday was utterly forgettable.
With players posting great scores all over the place — “It ought to be illegal what they’re doing right now,” CBS announcer Jim Nantz proclaimed at one point — McIlroy started pedaling backward. At one point, he bogeyed four holes in a row. He ended up shooting a 75, his highest score of the year, and is 13 strokes behind the leader.
Sungjae Im was at 12-under Saturday until, on the relatively easy par-5 No. 15, he messed up a wedge shot out of a bunker. The ball skidded though the green, banged off the Truist fencing and boomeranged right back into the same bunker.
It would have been good for a double off the wall in baseball; in this case, it meant a bizarre bogey for Im, who is still only four strokes off the lead.
In any case, it’s anybody’s tournament to win Sunday. Eight players are within five shots of the lead, including fan favorites Tommy Fleetwood and Justin Thomas. And it’s been relatively action-packed, with two holes in one (the first time that’s happened at a tournament here) and impressive numbers everywhere Saturday.
Scottie Scheffler, the No. 1 player in the world, is one of the few top golfers who’s not playing here this week. But when Scheffler played the PGA Championship on the same course in 2025, he shot 11-under-par and bested the entire field by at least five strokes.
That sort of margin seems unlikely to happen Sunday, with so many players so close to the lead.
One who isn’t, though, is Matt Fitzpatrick, the No. 4 player in the world. Alex’s older brother gave him an enormous helping hand in getting his tour card.
The two teamed up to win the Zurich Classic on April 26, and it was Matt’s crazy-good bunker shot that set up the team’s winning birdie. That gave Alex his PGA Tour card, and lest anyone think he didn’t deserve it, he had a top-10 finish in the next tournament in early May. Now he will enter Sunday trying to win on Mother’s Day.
Matt, though, is at even par, 14 strokes behind his brother this week. It was the younger brother’s show Saturday, and Alex told his caddie walking up the 18th fairway that he felt like he was living inside a dream.
Can he stay there for another day, with so many golfers lurking just behind him? It will be fun to find out.
