HE’D agree, it was a long time coming.
The resume read seven DP victories (he scored an eighth recently) four Ryder Cup appearances, three times on the winning European team while individually boasting an impressive 70 per cent win rate. He is currently fourth and has also been a constant in the top 10 over the past three-four years on the Official World Golf Rankings.
However, for all his international successes and the trophies collected around the world, a victory on the PGA TOUR in the US would frustratingly elude Tommy Fleetwood.
Joining the PGA TOUR on a full-time basis in 2018, Fleetwood had been six times a runner up, on six occasions he would finish third, with 31 top fives and 45 top 10’s to his credit.
He had been ever so close in some of the biggest events, a last day 63 at Shinnecock Hills almost stealing the US Open from Brooks Koepka when second in 2018, after being in the mix in placing fourth, again behind Koepka, the year prior.
Then after a couple more near-misses, it finally happened, the 34-year-old from Southport in the UK, now a resident in Dubai, scoring a first victory on US soil.
And he did it in an event offering a US$10million first prize, against a field of the 30 leading players in the US in 2025 at the FedEx Cup Tour Championship.
Fleetwood started Sunday’s final round at Eastlake with a three-shot lead, he was still three ahead when he made the turn, but that advantage was just a single stroke after a hooked tee shot on the 10th hole led to a bogey, while his closest pursuer in Patrick Cantlay was making birdie.
The proverbial squirrels were likely having a field day inside his head and under his Nike cap, but Fleetwood was able to give himself some breathing room once again
with birdies on 12 and 13 in regaining his three-shot buffer.
While not quite stress free, from there the popular Englishman was able to push the doubts aside and find his way to the clubhouse, and to the trophy presentation, three strokes clear of the chasing pack.
“You have to deal with those little demons that are in the back of your mind, and doubt creeps in,” Fleetwood said. “You remember what you got wrong, don’t want to get it wrong again, and you have to force yourself to think of the positives.”
Surely it was a first win that was coming. Fleetwood looked likely to break his duck at the Travellers Championship in June, until Keegan Bradley wrested the title away by making a 6-foot birdie putt on 18, before Fleetwood missed a slightly longer par attempt to tie.
Two weeks before his breakthrough win in Atlanta, he led by two strokes with three holes remaining in the FedEx St. Jude Championship, however after failing to birdie the par-five 16th or make a two-metre par putt on the 17th, Fleetwood found himself a stroke out of the playoff won by Justin Rose.
“Like any normal person, I get disappointed, I get sad, I get angry,” he said early in the week of the Tour Championship.
“But at the same time, … I think I have a good awareness that there’s no point making things a negative experience. You just have to learn from everything and try to do the best you can.
“I’ve had to be resilient in terms of putting myself back up there, getting myself back in that position, no matter how many times it doesn’t go my way, no matter how many doubts might creep in,” Fleetwood said.
European Ryder Cup counterparts Rose and Shane Lowry were waiting for Fleetwood behind the 18th green at Eastlake, as was his stepson Oscar Craig, who cried on the shoulder of the first time PGA Tour winner as they embraced on the green.
“He keeps getting knocked down and keeps getting back up and coming back stronger,” said Lowry.
“I’ve been a PGA TOUR winner for a long time,” Fleetwood said after the FedEx Cup success. “It’s just always been in my mind.”
Now it’s also due to his name being engraved on a very significant trophy, won in a place he had previously found hard to crack. What’s next now for Fleetwood in 2026 and beyond, for a man who finally found the finishing line on the PGA TOUR with his nose in front.
An amateur standout, winning the NSW Amateur and Australian Medal in 1988, before going down in the final of the 1990 Australian Amateur Championship, Rob Willis turned professional in 1992, playing the Australasian and Asian Tours, with his highlight being his victory in the 1995 Dubai Creek Open and third placing at the European Tour's Dubai Dessert Classic. A former Editor of Golf Australia Magazine, Willis, who ventured away from golf for a period to be the media manager for the NRL's Cronulla Sharks, has been a contributor to PGA Australia's PGA Magazine for over a decade and for Inside Golf since its first edition back in 2005. 
