British Open: Will Tommy Fleetwood’s long quest for victory end in triumph at Portrush?

Sports

add

There’s a camera angle from last month’s Travelers Championship, where Tommy Fleetwood lost to Keegan Bradley on the 72nd and final hole, that’s a tough watch. Fleetwood has just bogeyed the 18th, and Bradley is in position for the birdie, and a CBS camera caught Fleetwood watching Bradley set up for his tournament-winning six-foot putt.

For all his talent — he’s spent most of the last two years ranked among the game’s top 15 — Fleetwood has never won on the PGA Tour. That dubious run seemed ready to end all Travelers week, right up until the moment it all fell apart on him. And now, as Bradley prepared to rip the trophy out of his hands, Fleetwood could only watch.

Advertisement

Or not. As Bradley lined up the putt, Fleetwood buried his face in the crook of his left arm, remaining motionless even as the gallery exploded in delight. Only then, after a couple seconds’ pause, did he resurface.

That moment, and his gracious interview afterward, endeared Fleetwood to an even wider swath of golf fandom.

“I would have loved to have done it today,” he said afterward. “Search goes on, I guess. When it happens it will be very, very sweet.”

That lovable-loser, chin-up attitude is becoming every bit as much of Fleetwood’s persona as his cascading Nic-Cage-in-”Con Air” locks. Fleetwood is becoming very good at something you don’t want to get good at — grace in defeat.

Advertisement

And yet, because of who he is, because of his story, because of that as-yet-unfulfilled talent, fans still flock to him. Fleetwood is currently at +2200 to win the British Open, even with defending champion Xander Schauffele and 2019 champ Shane Lowry, and trailing only Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm.

Perhaps that’s being generous (and reading the room, anticipating Fleetwood-minded bettors), and perhaps not — Fleetwood does have three top-10s in his last five Opens. That total includes a solo second finish in 2019 … which just happened to take place at Royal Portrush, site of this year’s tournament.

The Travelers final result aside, Fleetwood is coming into the British Open with solid form. Through 14 tournaments this season, he’s made 13 cuts, recorded 11 top 25s, and reached the top 10 five times. Overall, he has seven European Tour wins, and he’s been a part of three European Ryder Cup teams in 2018, 2021 and 2023 — playing a big part in two European victories. He and Francesco Molinari were an unbeatable “Moliwood” duo in Paris in 2018, and he won the clinching point in Rome in 2023 over Rickie Fowler.

But the question for the 34-year-old Fleetwood isn’t ever whether he can play well consistently, it’s whether he can win. His name is high on that dreaded “best active player without a major” list, right up there with Fowler and Patrick Cantlay. He has eight top-10s in majors, including two solo second-place finishes — Royal Portrush, and the 2018 U.S. Open at Shinnecock, where he missed an eight-foot putt on the final hole that would have forced a playoff with Brooks Koepka. He’s also the proud owner of an Olympic medal, the silver he won last year in Paris.

Advertisement

There’s a bit of conventional wisdom in golf that if you keep kicking at the door, at some point you’ll kick it down. “In my mind,” Fleetwood said after the Travelers, “I’ve won loads of PGA Tour events, I just haven’t done it in reality, and I’m sure that time will come if I keep working.”

Persistence worked for McIlroy at the Masters this year, it worked for Schauffele at the majors last year. But conventional wisdom doesn’t necessarily hold; if it did, Fleetwood’s countryman Lee Westwood would have converted one of his eight top-three finishes in majors into a win.

In the moments after that Travelers loss, Fleetwood tried to put his heartbreak into context and into perspective. “Right now I would love to, you know, just go and sulk somewhere,” he said, “and maybe I will. … But there’s just no point making it a negative for the future, really, just take the positives and move on.” He’ll have the chance to do exactly that this week.

Advertisement

Regardless of how this week at Royal Portrush turns out, Fleetwood will still have the support of the gallery, and he’ll be a key element of the European squad heading into the Ryder Cup in September. Just a hunch — sure, he’d be happy with all that, but he’d be a whole lot happier with a Claret Jug on his shelf.

This news was originally published on this post .