Matt and Alex Fitzpatrick’s emotional victory at last week’s Zurich Classic was not the first time the brothers teamed up for a big win. Back in 2013, a 13-year-old Alex caddied for Matt during his U.S. Amateur victory at the Country Club.

If you thought that would be a dream-come-true for the pre-High School Alex, you thought wrong.

It turns out that the Fitzpatrick parents had to bribe their young son with a shiny new device to convince him to carry Matt’s bag that week, as Alex explained on Tuesday at the 2026 Cadillac Championship.

Alex Fitzpatrick ready to break out of Matt’s shadow after PGA Tour promotion

For most of their lives, Alex Fitzpatrick had to live in the shadow of his big brother. Matt Fitzpatrick showed signs of greatness early on.

He backed them up with a career-changing victory at the 2022 U.S. Open, at the exact same course, the Country Club in Brookline, where he won the U.S. Amateur with Alex on the bag nine years before.

Matt is currently on the hottest streak of his career, having won three PGA Tour events since late March to rise to World No. 3. But Alex is on a tear of his own.

After capturing his first DP World Tour win in March, he teed it up with Matt at the PGA Tour’s Zurich Classic of New Orleans last week, for what he was expecting to simply be a good opportunity for “spending time with my brother.”

Alex got the family time he was looking for, but he also walked away with a victory, giving him a PGA Tour card for two years, over $1 million in prize money and spots in the remaining Signature Events.

So while Matt is taking it easy this week following his third win of the year, Alex is in Florida to play the Cadillac Championship.

Alex Fitzpatrick reveals parents’ bribery scheme to get him to caddie for Matt

During his pre-tournament press conference, Fitzpatrick was asked about his original partnership with his brother Matt at the 2013 U.S. Amateur.

For outsiders, it was a fairytale week that harkened back to Francis Ouimet’s U.S. Open win at Brookline one hundred years before, when 10-year-old Eddie Lowery famously carried his bag.

For Alex, the vibe was very different. In fact, he didn’t want to caddie for Matt that week at all. Their dad, Russell Fitzpatrick, was then forced to take an extreme measure to make it happen: bribery. He promised to buy Alex a new phone if he caddied for Matt in the tournament.

“I only caddied for [Matt] at the U.S. Amateur because my dad promised me a new phone,” Alex revealed in his Tuesday press conference at Trump Doral. “That was only reason why I caddied for him, because it was too expensive to buy a caddie for the week, so I got dragged into that one.”

Alex added that he did indeed get his new phone after Matt won, calling it a “win-win.”

“And then he won and then I got a new phone, so it was a win-win all around,” he joked.

Alex Fitzpatrick’s parents had to bribe him with a new phone to get him to caddie for Matt at the U.S. Amateur.

Matt Fitzpatrick took home the Havemeyer Trophy. Alex got a new phone. pic.twitter.com/DG4dj698gP

— GOLF.com (@GOLF_com) April 29, 2026

It’s been a whirlwind few days since the Zurich triumph, but now Alex is set to chart his own PGA Tour career without his brother by his side beginning at the Cadillac Championship.

While Matt won’t be there in person, he did send Alex a touching note of encouragement for the Cadillac the morning after their Zurich victory.

“He just said, you know, he said enjoy it. He sent me a really nice text the morning afterwards that was like, you know, as much as this win is both of us, you deserve to be here, you’re playing some great golf, go out there and show them what you have and just try and enjoy it as much as you can really, that was the biggest message from him,” Alex said on Tuesday.

Fitzpatrick tees off for the first round of his new PGA Tour career on Thursday at 1:20 p.m. ET.

Matthew Fitzpatrick has never been a fan of slow play — nor the way the PGA Tour has handled the problem.

So it was only fitting that his latest Tour win came with an extra hurdle: His playing partner’s pace.

“That was really frustrating. It was slow today. I felt like there was a lot of stop-start,” Fitzpatrick said after his win at the Valspar Championship.

He chose his words carefully and never called out his playing partner Adrien Dumont de Chassart by name, but his words echoed sentiments he’s shared throughout his years on Tour. It’s a tricky tension to tackle — individuals playing for their livelihoods will always take the time they feel they need, while stroke penalties can feel hard to fairly dish out — Fitzpatrick has consistently called out the policing of issue, using phrases like “truly appalling,” “a disgrace,” “pathetic” and more.

Three years ago, following a big-time win at Harbour Town, Fitzpatrick took aim in a Sky Sports interview. But he also acknowledged he was taking a futile stand.

“The problem is, though, this conversation has gone on for years and years and years, and no one has ever done anything,” he said at the time. “So I feel it’s almost a waste of time talking about it every time. I have my opinions — they’re probably strong opinions, but PGA Tour, DP World Tour, no one’s going to do anything about it.”

Back to Sunday, then. While Fitzpatrick’s day was smooth — he fired three-under 68 en route to his first PGA Tour victory in nearly three years — Dumont de Chassart’s was less so. The 26-year-old Belgian’s opening tee shot flew out of bounds en route to triple-bogey 8 and he made a second 8 at the par-5 11th; his handling of the latter took such a long time that Fitzpatrick, who’d played out of turn in an attempt to keep their group on pace, took the unusual step of asking an official for help.

NBC’s on-course reporter John Wood said that Fitzpatrick was “perturbed” by Chassart’s pace, which he described as “glacial, to be kind.”

Rules official Orlando Pope confirmed on the broadcast that Fitzpatrick had spoken with an official and that the Tour had begun unofficially timing him; that eventually led to an official warning.

“Yeah, just, you know, just not ready,” Fitzpatrick said, referencing his playing partner, if not by name. He was drawing a distinction between making a high score — which happens and can inevitably slow up play — and playing slowly while doing so.

“When you’re not ready to play a golf shot it gets frustrating after awhile. Particularly when you playing well yourself or you’re in contention or whatever it is. It definitely knocks you out of your rhythm. Because you hit, you walk to it, you kind of think about it, you hit again, and you go. 

“There in particular that hole, then you’re around a stretch there that can get a little bit quirky with different shots and stuff, so you have to be on it,” Fitzpatrick continued. “It definitely knocked me out of rhythm I felt like for the next two, three holes. I was kind of chasing my tail, because I’m trying to speed up and trying to keep us or get back in position, and at the same time you’re obviously trying to win a golf tournament.”

Fitzpatrick did ultimately win that golf tournament.

Chassart tumbled to T26 after a 74. Still, he avoided any slow-play penalty and improved from No. 97 to 91 in the season-long FedEx Cup standings.

It has been nearly nine years since the last time the Tour last issued a stroke penalty. The Tour announced several potential fixes early last season. Safe to say Fitzpatrick thinks those remain a work in progress.

But if given the chance, we doubt he’d change anything about Sunday’s winning round.