The tribulations of a restless prince-in-waiting were best told on Sunday night through the manic social media posts of a sitting king.
LeBron James, master of the NBA, was being tossed around like everyone else who had invested themselves in the same question: could Tommy Fleetwood finally crack America?
‘Feels like today is the day,’ was his first of six related posts on X, as he settled down to watch footage of the final round of the Tour Championship at East Lake, Atlanta. But then the doubts moved in, because it was Fleetwood and Fleetwood had history.
In 163 starts on the PGA Tour, he had been the runner-up six times, third in a further half-dozen, and on 30 occasions he was top five. Closing out a tournament? The number of doors he left open were a tour record and his narrative. The best who never…
James, in many ways Fleetwood’s character antithesis, a champion supreme, a great closer, had been sucked in as he waited to see if an English lad from Southport could change his story at the 164th time of asking.
‘Scottie on the creep again, man o man,’ James wrote of Scheffler as the leading groups rounded the turn, and by then Fleetwood’s lead had slipped from three to one. Was it happening again, just like it did in Connecticut nine weeks ago and Memphis earlier this month?
At the 164th time of asking, Tommy Fleetwood became a winner on the PGA Tour
Fleetwood had let victory slip through his grasp a few times already this year
NBA legend LeBron James is a big golf fan and was tweeting his support for Fleetwood on Sunday night
Maybe it was. Unknown to us, but retrospectively apparent in his wayward tee shots at the fifth, eighth and 10th holes, Fleetwood would later admit he had ‘lost’ his swing entirely — the rhythm was gone and the mechanics were out of sync. Nothing is more terrifying to a golfer than that happening when it matters most and on a course named after its lakes.
For Fleetwood, the guy of 34 who never closes? The guy forever asked about why that might be? He admitted a few doubts himself, and of course they were there. ‘Little demons’ he called them when all was said and done.
But he paused for breath and did a bit of thinking and got to work on a battlefield repair, because sometimes old scars are useful to learn from. He’d been there before. So he slowed himself down, blocked out what he knew we were all thinking, and found a few good swings.
‘Up three with two to play for all the marbles,’ wrote James as Fleetwood stepped to the 17th tee, but still you had to wonder, as Fleetwood had held the exact same lead in Connecticut and Memphis.
A word on those marbles at this point. Fleetwood had said earlier in the week he would find it ‘pretty funny’ if the day it eventually clicked came at the tournament with the most lucrative pot on tour – £7.4million. Looking back now, we might all agree that the best laughs are the ones you have to wait for.
When that last tap-in dropped, and Fleetwood roared to the sky in catharsis, James, too, lost himself in a blur of emojis. It wasn’t long before Tiger Woods was tweeting for only the third time this month: ‘Your journey is a reminder that hard work, resilience, and heart do pay off. No one deserves it more.’
Closer to hand, Justin Rose was stood next to Fleetwood’s adult stepson, Oscar, and filming the moment at greenside like a kid. There’s some deeper relevance there.
Rose and Fleetwood were on holiday together in Portugal earlier this month and a week later it was Rose who inflicted the most recent heartbreak with a comeback in Memphis. Watching Fleetwood win, he said, meant as much as winning himself. If it was about anyone other than Fleetwood, coming from someone other than Rose, you might even doubt the sincerity.
There are few people more universally beloved in the sport of golf than Fleetwood
Justin Rose had broken Fleetwood’s heart in Memphis two weeks ago, but now was on hand to film his friend’s euphoric win
But everyone loves it when the nice guy doesn’t finish second. And Fleetwood, by some consensus, is one of the most decent men in sport. It’s why his win resonated so much inside and beyond golf’s borders.
I have spoken to Fleetwood many times in this job and most recently last month in Scotland, not long after he blew his lead in Memphis and we wondered aloud if he would ever cross that finishing line. It was similar to those conversations we had until recently about Rory McIlroy and the Masters — they can be hard chats to have with those living the disappointments.
That day Fleetwood knew what I wanted to discuss and that we had postponed it twice already earlier in the week. His round at the Scottish Open had also been an unfulfilling one and presumably the last thing he needed was an examination of fresh wounds, but he sought me out and we spoke for 10 minutes.
He was clearly still hurting as he spoke about the pain his wife Clare and kids were feeling for him, but also why the hard experiences can serve as fuel. I suggested the latter can sound like a cliche, and he pushed back hard on that.
‘No, it’s not,’ he said. ‘Why would I make a difficult experience even more of a hindrance to myself going forward?
‘I can say it’s my toughest loss or I can tell myself it’s the best result of the year and I played amazing and I’m getting close. Every week we have to start all over again, the golfing world moves on fast, so why take something bad forward when you can take something good?’
Easier said than done, I pointed out, and the lifelong Evertonian agreed. He stuck around until I was done prodding and then asked how my own, dire, golf game was going.
That relentless positivity, his geniality, as much as his ball-striking, has been his superpower and it’s one reason why James and Woods wanted him to get it won.
Fleetwood with his wife Clare at the 2023 Ryder Cup – he is one of six automatic qualifiers for Luke Donald’s Team Europe next month at Bethpage
His authenticity in a sport wedded to artifice and pretence has counted enormously in his popularity
The greats understand it on a different level to the onlookers, but they all wanted him to win just the same, even the American fans at East Lake as he held off a number of their Ryder Cup stars. That crossover appeal is rare and so are great tales like that of Fleetwood. His authenticity in a sport wedded to artifice and pretence has counted enormously in his popularity.
I recall him joking after winning one of his numerous non-US wins — he has seven on the European Tour — in 2022 that his youngest son, Frankie, then aged five, used to bring home medals from school to present to him, because ‘you never win at golf’. An equally fun line came when he spoke about the 23-year age gap to his wife: ‘Clare actually looks very young for her age.’
Today he and Clare, who used to be his agent before they became romantically involved, live in Dubai, away from the Florida-based conurbations of most elite golfers, with Clare’s two children from a previous marriage, Oscar and Mo, who are in their late teens.
Whenever Fleetwood is asked about his family in lifestyle interviews, he says he has three kids. To him, ‘Clare is incredibly cool and I’m not cool at all’. The fact he couldn’t care less about being ‘cool’ has been part of the charm.
Much hostility is expected when Luke Donald’s Europeans defend the Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black in New York next month. It will be one of the factors in Donald’s favour that among their best players is a guy who even the most inebriated native will find it hard to insult.
