What is most impressive about Matt Fitzpatrick

I have in the past been deeply critical of Matt Fitzpatrick’s dour demeanour. There have been times where I have watched him play while in contention to win and got the impression that he would rather be anywhere else.

But credit where it is due. After losing the Players Championship to Cameron Young at TPC Sawgrass it is fair to say that the former US Open winner must have been pretty devastated. But instead of stomping off in a strop, he warmly embraced Young and then made a point of seeking out Young’s family beside the 18th green and hugged them and shook their hands.

It was a classy gesture and one that took me and many others by surprise. And Fitzpatrick wasted no time getting his just reward by holing a 14-foot putt on the final green to win the Valspar Championship one week later. I believe that 12-18 months ago, the Englishman may have struggled to recover from such a bitter disappointment. But this is a new-look Matt Fitzpatrick.

Young is a player who knows what it is like to miss out on big titles. He finished second seven times before finally landing his first win. He has crumbled when the pressure has been on. Fitzpatrick was aware of this and quite clearly empathised with his American rival and was able to put his own disappointment to one side. He may well have gone into the changing rooms afterwards and punched the wall but it was what he did in public that people will remember - and I guarantee that the American fans will have warmed to him.

They jeered and booed him coming down the stretch but he also took all of that in his stride, reminding them afterwards that he had experienced worse at Bethpage Black during last year’s Ryder Cup. Much worse!

There was a time, not so long ago, that being booed by the crowd would have brought out the worst in Fitzpatrick. But at Sawgrass he could be seen laughing at what was being said to him by a deeply biased crowd. He said: "The crowd, that was literally child's play compared to Bethpage. If they think that that was anything, then they need to reassess. Get yourself up to New York.

"Listen, that's how it is. That's how it is. I would hope it's the exact same if - well, it probably wouldn't be because we're a little bit more polite in Europe, I would say, but I would hope it would be of similar intensity in Europe."

Fitzpatrick has enjoyed a fabulous career but his game then fell off a cliff for the best part of two years. He has worked his socks off to get back to where he believes he belongs. What he might have once taken for granted he no longer does. When a career decline begins there is often no way back but Fitzpatrick has defied the odds.

He is now back up to sixth in the world rankings. At last year’s US PGA Championship he was 85th. And that is when things really began to take an upturn. He narrowly missed out on the Tour Championship and returned to Europe and finished sixth at the British Masters, fifth at the European Masters and fifth at the BMW PGA Championship and then won the DP World Tour Championship, proving he was finally back to his best.

And the thing that has struck me most through all of this is that Fitzpatrick has finally learned to play the game with a smile on his face and is enjoying every minute of his life on tour because he knows how close he came to losing it all. I was thrilled to see him win the Valspar in the manner that he did.

You will recall that Rory McIlroy stormed off without comment after losing the US Open to Bryson DeChambeau, that Collin Morikawa did the same thing after Russell Henley beat him at Bay Hill last year.

We have routinely watched the likes of Jon Rahm, Shane Lowry, Tyrrell Hatton and many others cursing and slamming clubs into the ground, with TV commentators constantly having to apologise for their bad language and childish behaviour.

During the 1970s I used to cringe while watching Tom Weiskopf, who became known on the PGA Tour as Towering Inferno.

Let’s be clear about something - golf is not a matter of life and death, and do not let anybody try to convince you that it is. The men and women who play our sport at the highest level are lucky individuals who get to play on the best courses on the planet, usually with the sun on their backs. They earn vast sums of money, stay in the best hotels and are surrounded by support teams who tell them how wonderful they are.

It seems to me that Fitzpatrick has decided that the time has come for him to smell the flowers and I applaud him for doing so.