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Rory McIlroy didn’t look. As Tommy Fleetwood lined up the winning putt on the 14th green, McIlroy turned his back on his playing partner and faced the blue and yellow pocket of European supporters in a stand behind the green. The ball dropped into the cup, the fans leapt to their feet and McIlroy pumped his giant forearms with delight.
Fleetwood’s putt sealed a dominant 5&4 win in the first morning’s foursomes here at Bethpage Black. Fleetwood was excellent and McIlroy was sensational, delivering a putting masterclass to race away from Harris English and Collin Morikawa, going 5 up through eight holes. A brief embrace between the two teams on the last green was about the closest the Americans ever got.
McIlroy played with aura. He talked this week about finding the balance between Hazeltine, where he was too confrontational with American fans, and Whistling Straits, where his stoic approach inhibited his game. Here he played with a quiet defiance, smiling on the first tee as refrains of “F*** you, Rory!” rained down from the horseshoe grandstand around him.
The thing with American golf fans is that the average spectator is not nearly as obnoxious as you might imagine. Plenty showed their appreciation, especially for Fleetwood. What happened here is that one man who appeared to have been let out for the day made himself louder and more visible than the thousands of other people lining the fairways.
He became McIlroy’s personal heckler, a rotund man in a red T-shirt wearing the US flag as a cape. He bellowed reminders of McIlroy’s lowest career moments, at one point shouting “Rory’s a choke artist!” while the players walked down the 11th fairway. McIlroy turned and smiled. “I’m here all day baby,” came the heckler’s reply. “You’ve got me for all 18 holes.” Which wasn’t strictly true, because the match only lasted 14.
McIlroy was relentless. Time and again it worked out that he and English were on the green fighting for the hole, and the world No 2 was peerless, making crucial putts on the first, the third, the fourth, the fifth and the eighth holes, by which point the match was dead and buried.
Harris had something of Andy Dufresne about him – a tall drink of water, slow moving, looking like he didn’t quite belong in his surroundings – and he was overawed by the occasion here. Harris has enjoyed a great season on the PGA Tour, especially in the majors, but the Ryder Cup is a different beast and it can swallow rookies whole.
He and Morikawa looked like an odd pairing from the start, and datagolf rated them the worst possible foursomes combination Keegan Bradley could have chosen out of 132 possible configurations. The US fans grew frustrated with their own, with one yelling: “When are you guys ever going to make a putt?” in Morikawa’s face after he had missed a crucial one on the 10th green.
It helped that Europe were immediately 1 up thanks to Tommy Fleetwood’s deft chip from thick rough on the first hole, which McIlroy knocked in for a birdie. McIlroy rolled in a nerveless par putt to keep Europe ahead on the second, and then birdied the par-five fourth hole after Fleetwood had splashed out of a greenside bunker to five feet. Fleetwood’s precise iron shot from the first cut left McIlroy another putt for the hole on five, which dropped to move Europe four up.
The shot of the day was probably McIlroy’s approach to the sixth green. He was in the wet rough, on a downslope, aiming between two bunkers to a flag at the very front of the green. He sent a towering wedge shot into the sky and dropped stone dead a couple of feet from the hole. McIlroy stared at the home fans for just a beat before marching after his ball.
Beside him, Fleetwood was an excellent foil. His approach shots were typically precise and he regularly left his ball just inside Morikawa’s, on slightly safer ground, a little closer to the hole. The American fans made a few tame jokes about getting a haircut but for the most part, Fleetwood is just too loveable to hate. “English tea sucks,” was one of the more strange comments directed his way.
Fleetwood-Mac is blossoming into one of the great European pairings, having won both their matches in Rome two years ago, and McIlroy stared into Fleetwood’s eyes at the finish with a look of adoration for his teammate.
“I think when you’ve got a partner like Tommy, you can play with so much freedom and so much trust in your game because you know you have someone that’s going to back you up,” he said. “That’s how I’ve felt, the two times we’ve played in Rome and today.”
Fleetwood has grown since Rome to the point where he is now one of Europe’s leaders, a FedEx Cup champion, and it would not be a surprise if he is asked to play the maximum five matches this week.
“Foursomes can be a tough format,” McIlroy added. “You can play a little tentative with the way the format is, but knowing I have this man beside me to bail me out if I do hit a bad shot, that’s very comforting to know.”
Fleetwood and McIlroy will be back together on Saturday morning for more. English and Morikawa will not.
