NORTH BERWICK, SCOTLAND | In childhood days, Tommy Fleetwood was in awe of Royal Birkdale and its status in the golfing world. There were plenty of other courses close to the family home in Southport, England, but, to the wide-eyed Tommy, Birkdale was an Open venue which was closed.
At last week’s Genesis Scottish Open at the Renaissance Club, he recalled how his mother once took a picture of him standing proudly on the path which led to a gap in the hedgerow where his golfing dreams began. Once the members of Royal Birkdale had disappeared for the night, he and his father, Pete, would sneak through the undergrowth onto the fifth hole. They never played it; they just hit a few shots before anyone caught them.
“You can’t sneak through the places we used to sneak through any more,” Fleetwood said. “Now, there’s fences and bushes to keep you out.”
A pity, because if that’s how Tommy started, you can only wonder how many other would-be Tommys have missed out on that opportunity.
Of the 300,000 spectators who are expected to pour into Birkdale this week, the majority will be rooting for Fleetwood, a much-loved local hero if ever there were one. He started off as a member of Formby Golf Club before adding Southport and Ainsdale, the links which shares the same expanse of dunes as Birkdale.
Jim Payne was the pro at Southport and Ainsdale and, when he arrived on the scene, Tommy’s dad wanted Tommy to go to him for lessons. (Payne had been low amateur at the 1991 Open and gone on to win two European Tour events, only for his competitive career to be cut short by spinal fusion surgery.)
Tommy was 12 when he and Payne first met. “He was way ahead of others in his age group,” remembers Payne, one of the many old friends who will be following Fleetwood over the next few days. “I helped him a bit technically but I saw myself as more of a mentor.”
It was fascinating to hear what each had to say about the other. “Jim didn’t try to alter the golfer that you already were,” Fleetwood said. “He just wanted you to make the right choices as you started to take things more seriously.”
In contemplating the teenager’s likely future, Payne would drive him to tournament venues which he knew would be on his schedule before too long. “Unlike other amateurs who are at their best on links,” he said, “Tommy had a game that was ready to be good anywhere.”
Tommy could not, for the life of him, remember that shot of shots. “It sounds great and I’d just love to be able to hit it again,” he said with a bemused grin.
There was a trip to Scotland where they visited Gleneagles and Carnoustie. Gleneagles, which they played a couple of times, turned out to be a good bet because it was there that the 22-year-old Fleetwood won his first European Tour title, the 2013 Johnnie Walker Championship. As for Carnoustie, that was the course where Payne saw Fleetwood hit a shot to the par-5 17th which he will never forget.
After Tommy had mis-hit his drive into the burn, he dropped another ball and reached for his 3-iron. “He hit it like others would hit a wedge,” Payne said. “It was the right height and the right flight, with the ball coming to a sudden halt by the flag.”
By the time he had walked off Carnoustie’s 17th green with a birdie, Payne had come to the conclusion that his student could do anything. “Everyone knew that he was good, but I knew that he was better than good,” he said.
For a later step, Payne suggested that as a young professional Tommy should go on a solo trip to Augusta for the 2014 Masters. Not as a player but as a spectator. “Study the course and the way they’re playing it,” he told him. And off Tommy went, with everyone knowing that he would make the most of the trip. “He wasn’t and never has been a party-goer,” Payne said.
A new mural of Tommy Fleetwood by artist Paul Curtis on the side of the Southport and Ainsdale Sports Club illustrates Fleetwood’s local support.
Peter Byrne, PA IMAGES VIA GETTY IMAGES
Chubby Chandler, Darren Clarke’s manager, gave Tommy a room in the house he had booked for the week and, that apart, Tommy was on his own. “I watched a lot of Zach Johnson but, over the week, I probably watched all of them. If I were a teaching professional, I’d be encouraging my pupils to do what Jim encouraged me to do. I learned a lot.”
He may have missed the cut at his first Masters in 2017, but he had a top-20 finish the following spring.
When Tiger Woods won the 1997 Masters, Earl Woods had stepped from the sidelines after the winner’s press conference to mention that his son was “up there with God.”
Tommy’s dad used to say that his boy was going to be the best in the world and, though you get lots of dads who say that about their kids, what he said made sense, and Payne could see that Fleetwood had what it would take to become an elite player.
“My parents were great,” Fleetwood said. “They were only hard on me if I wasn’t giving my golf everything I had. There was an element of being pushed, but it went no further than that.”
Now a father of three himself – two stepsons, Oscar and Murray, and Frankie, who was born to him and his wife, Clare, in 2017 – Tommy says he has a good idea of how difficult it is for parents to strike the right balance.
There have been ups and downs in Fleetwood’s career and it was Wayne Riley, the Sky commentator and former European Tour player, who observed early on that Tommy had had more top-10s on the PGA Tour without winning than any other player. “He’s got to start questioning why this is happening and whether he needs help from someone to take him in another mental direction,” said the Aussie.
“You need a competitive streak, but I can honestly say that if I’m involved in any kind of altercation, I always want to leave the other person feeling better rather than worse.”
Tommy Fleetwood
Payne, for his part, had started to wonder if Fleetwood was almost “too nice” to reach the top. “He didn’t have that selfish streak that most of the top players have.
"He didn’t win, he didn’t win and he didn’t win.”
Only then it happened. Last August, Fleetwood, who by then was getting help from Dr. Bob Rotella, won the Tour Championship, his first PGA Tour victory, and with it came a $10 million prize. “In my mind,” he said, “I’ve been a PGA Tour winner for a long time. It’s just that it’s stayed in my mind [until now].”
Many players change and, in Tommy’s case, that hasn’t happened. “You can only be yourself,” Fleetwood said. “You need a competitive streak, but I can honestly say that if I’m involved in any kind of altercation, I always want to leave the other person feeling better rather than worse.”
His next frontier is to win a major – maybe this week’s – and, judging from the classy way he handled the bad-mannered goings-on at last year’s Ryder Cup, it wouldn’t surprise anyone were he to end up following Luke Donald, and probably Justin Rose, as a Ryder Cup captain.
Which is precisely what the next batch of Ryder Cup stars deserve.
Top: Tommy Fleetwood, shown during the 2017 Open at Birkdale, returns this week.
RICHARD HEATHCOTE, GETTY IMAGES
