Finally Fleetwood! Tommy takes Tour
Fleetwood's first win earns FedEx Cup; It's decision time for Captain Keegan
Tommy Fleetwood and longtime caddie Ian Finnis enjoy the moment (Ben Jared/PGA Tour via Getty Images)
ATLANTA, Ga. — Long after their own scorecards were signed and their FedEx Cup seasons were finished on Sunday, Shane Lowry, Justin Rose and Harry Hall were all standing behind the 18th green at East Lake Golf Club to welcome a good friend to the fraternity of PGA Tour winners.
It speaks to the popularity of Tommy Fleetwood among the fans who chanted “Tommy! Tommy!” and his peers as well as the strain on the 34-year-old Englishman was finally over.
Fleetwood arrived at the Tour Championship carrying the weight of a PGA Tour record nobody wants — the most career top-five finishes (30) without ever winning in 163 career starts. Only Bobby Wadkins had more top-10 finishes (50) than Fleetwood’s 44 without a win.
“I think it would be pretty funny if I won this week and then got the FedEx Cup as well,” Fleetwood said on Tuesday.
Days later he delivered the punchline, holding off his own demons and a chasing cast of likely U.S. Ryder Cup rivals including world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler and captain Keegan Bradley to become the first player in the 19-year FedEx Cup era to make the Tour Championship his first career victory. Fleetwood posted four consecutive sub-par rounds to finish 18-under par and win the FedEx Cup and it’s official $10 million prize by three shots over Patrick Cantlay and Russell Henley.
The last player to make the Tour Championship his first career PGA Tour win was Chad Campbell in 2003, four years before the FedEx Cup began. The only player to win the FedEx Cup with a lone victory at the Tour Championship was Bill Haas in 2011.
“I think I’m proud of what I’ve done before; whether I’ve won or not, I’ve still been proud of my career so far, knowing that I still have a long way to go and lots of learning,” said Fleetwood. “This doesn’t change that really. This is hopefully just one win, the first of many to come. You cannot win plenty if you don’t win the first one.
“I’m just happy that I got it done and happy with my work ethic, and I’ll continue to try and get better and try to be the best I can be.”
Fleetwood came to the season finale at East Lake very much hoping to put an end to his ignominious PGA Tour standard that loomed larger with a pair of painful near misses this summer in the Travelers Championship to Bradley and the FedEx St. Jude Championship playoff opener to Justin Rose. Those heartbreaks raised the seven-time DP World Tour winner’s PGA numbers to 12 top-threes and six runner-ups without a trophy.
In both of those defeats, Fleetwood held late two-shot leads that evaporated down the final holes. He handled both setbacks with his trademark grace and optimism.
Naturally, Fleetwood stepped to the 16th tee at East Lake with a two-shot lead on playing partner Cantlay with three to play after making bogey on the par-3 15th. But it was Cantlay who made the mistake with a bogey to put Fleetwood three up with two to play. A couple of undramatic pars was all it took to finally finish it off and lift, not just one, but two trophies on the 18th green at the historic home club of Bobby Jones.
The relief was evident on his face after he holed the final putt for par to close it out.
“I feel like I’ve had a great attitude throughout it all,” Fleetwood said. “I was a bit erratic today at times, and I was really proud of how I found my swing again on like the 11th hole, 12th hole. Changed my routine a little bit, and yeah – still, when you’ve lost it so many times, three-shot lead down the last doesn’t feel like that many.”
Fleetwood never considered that he might end his career without ever winning on the PGA Tour, but he admitted that the longer it didn’t happen you start to wonder.
“The smallest thoughts creep in. But I -- no, I never really felt like it wouldn't happen. But there's always doubt there. But I always sort of had belief in myself that you keep knocking on the door, you keep putting yourself up there, you keep playing well, keep learning from all the near misses and keep putting that into action in the next tournament or the next tournament or the next time you get a chance, see what is going to happen. The people that win the most -- I always feel like if you look at what the best players do and try and copy it -- whether you're as good as them or not is a different story, but if you watch what they do and you copy them as much as possible, I think that's a good way to go.
“I think that the guys that win the most, they're in contention so much; they're up there all the time. That's where I want to be. I want to be up there. It's taken me a while to get this done, like to get this first win. I've never looked at it as just trying to win once. I've always had the mindset that I want to win multiple. I want to win plenty. It's just that the first one seems to have taken a long time. The next one might take a long time; I don't know.
“But I've always had the mindset that I just want to be one of the best players in the world, I want to keep putting myself in contention, and yeah, I always felt like it would probably happen.”
While Luke Donald’s European Ryder Cup team is likely to have the same DNA as the one that won in 2023 in Rome – with the only difference a swap in the Højgaard twin brothers from Nicolai in Rome to Rasmus at New York – U.S. Ryder Cup Keegan Bradley will have to make some hard choices to finalize his roster with six captain’s picks on Wednesday.
Six candidates – including himself – finished among the top 10 including: runner-up Cantlay (15-under); Cameron Young (T4, 14-under); Justin Thomas, Sam Burns and Bradley (T7, 13-under); and Ben Griffin and Chris Gotterup (T10, 12-under).
Scheffler’s bid to become the first player to win consecutive FedEx Cup fell short as he tied for fourth with Young and Canadian Corey Conners. Scheffler never had his best stuff all week but still loomed on the leaderboard Sunday despite hitting his opening tee shot out of bounds and making a double bogey and two bogeys on the day.
“I battled all week to give myself a chance,” Scheffler said. “I wasn’t as sharp as I would have hoped to have been. I had a good first round, but outside of that didn’t really play my best the first few days. Still gave myself a shot. Just needed a few better swings.”
Will Keegan Bradley join Russell Henley as a U.S. player at Bethpage? (John Adams/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
It’s decision time for Captain Keegan
ATLANTA — In a playful moment after the final round of the Tour Championship, Keegan Bradley asked his 7-year-old son, Logan, if he should play in the Ryder Cup.
Without hesitation, the kid raised a thumbs up, to a good bit of laughter.
There you have it.
Perhaps that decision that looms this week is as simple as the U.S. Ryder Cup captain asking his son for advice.
The reality is far different.
Bradley has called the decision “the toughest” of his life, and it’s easy to see why. Any way he goes is not necessarily right or wrong. That doesn’t make it any easier in the short term before he delivers his six captain’s choices to round out his 12-man American roster at 11 a.m. on Wednesday.
“No, because I think no matter what decision that I make here, I could have gone the other way easily, no matter what,” Bradley said. “The only thing I care about is on Sunday of the Ryder Cup, that we win the Ryder Cup. Then I’ll know I made the right decision.
“Until then, I won't know. It’s going to be pretty wild. Whatever decision we make, we’re going to have to live with it. I love the guys on our team. They’re all playing great. It’s just really something else. It’s awesome.”
Bradley has a couple of days to ponder with an announcement scheduled for Wednesday from PGA of America headquarters in Frisco, Texas. (Why they feel the need to make a Ryder Cup announcement there when the event is in New York and all the media was assembled in Atlanta on Sunday is a bit baffling.)
And it doesn’t seem to be any easier when the players around him are, for the most part, telling him he should play.
Bradley dismisses that, saying that he is being judged both good and bad by the assistant captains, including Jim Furyk who captained the U.S. team in France in 2018.
“If there are negatives, I want to hear them,” Bradley said. “I would be more upset if they didn’t say them.
“I feel like I’m still one of the best players in the world. I figured the likelihood of me being completely out of the picture was probably kind of slim. Even if I was 20th in points, could win this tournament and you never know. We’ve been preparing for this. It certainly would be a lot easier if I was top six or way out of it. But it is what it is.”
Bradley ended up 11th in the points when the top six players were decided last week at the BMW Championship. He moved up to 11th in the Official World Golf Ranking after his tie for seventh at the Tour Championship.
It’s the same position he was in two years ago when Zach Johnson did not select him, a decision that was made more fraught later when Bradley was shown in the episode of “Full Swing” on Netflix getting the negative phone call. And certainly even more so in the aftermath of a resounding U.S. defeat.
Justin Thomas was one of the beneficiaries then — he was picked despite not making the playoffs — but finds himself in a much better position this time. He is seventh in the points and seems sure to join automatic qualifiers Scottie Scheffler, J.J. Spaun, Xander Schauffele, Russell Henley, Harris English and Bryson DeChambeau on the U.S. team.
Form is fleeting and so much goes into these decisions that trying to decipher much from one last tournament seems fruitless.
“It’s a lot. I think Keegan would say the same,” Thomas said. “I don’t think he would say it’s easy by any means. But I have myself, whatever other captains, automatic qualifiers have all the faith in the world that whatever he decides to do is going to be in the best interest of the team.”
Thomas would seemingly be a lock. Same for OWGR No. 7 Collin Morikawa, though he’s done little this season to generate much confidence he’s in top form. It would be rare to not take the seventh and eighth finishers in the points and there are numerous reasons to pick those guys based on their past experience, anyway.
But that doesn’t make the situation any less tenuous.
“You’re never comfortable,” Morikawa said. “I don’t think you’re ever comfortable until you get that call and you’re on the team. At the end of the day, this is a different type of event. I would say after qualifying, it’s been two years’ work, and the Ryder Cup is still a month away.
“Look, I hope I’ve done enough. We’ll have to wait and see. But I think my focus right now is to try and go out and win this golf tournament. I think if I do that, then hopefully that’s enough, and we’ll see how everything plays out.”
The others in contention would be Ben Griffin, who finished ninth in points, Maverick McNealy, who was 10th, Bradley, Brian Harman, Andrew Novak, Cameron Young, Patrick Cantlay and Sam Burns.
If you assume that Thomas and Morikawa are in, then that’s eight players for four spots. It’s why Bradley’s own candidacy makes it more difficult.
“I’ve been in this position before where I’m trying to make the team,” said Bradley, who played on the Ryder Cup team in both 2012 and 2014. “This is really strange for me to be the captain. It’s not really something anyone has ever really gone through.
“I’m looking at the board at all day. Not looking for me. Looking for where my guys are. It’s just really odd. It’s a really strange feeling to look at the board and have no feeling where I stand but seeing where our guys are. That’s the opposite of what we do every week. It’s definitely strange. I’m going to be really happy when this week is over. I’ve about had it with this whole thing. I’m ready to figure out what we’re doing and get the team together.”
Bradley would be the first playing captain since Arnold Palmer in 1963. It was played at East Lake that year, and the reminders were not lost on Bradley, who registered for the tournament in The Captain’s Room, which is filled with Palmer artifacts, including his bag from that tournament.
“All of his stuff from 1963 is in there, his bag — it's pretty surreal looking at it,” Bradley said. “I wish he was alive and I could call him. If I had one thing I wish I could call Arnold and talk to him because I think he’d have some great advice for me.”
Palmer might very well say that Bradley should play. The seven-time major winner who passed away in 2016 competed in the Ryder Cup in a different era, when the intensity was far less than it is today. As playing captain, Palmer played in all six matches when the format had two Sunday singles sessions. There were no vice captains back then.
He also didn’t have to pick himself because there were no picks. In 1963, the entire team was chosen based on the points list at the time immediately following the PGA Championship. The Ryder Cup wasn’t until October but Palmer wasn’t even named captain until two months prior to the event.
A far different time.
Bradley understands more than anyone.
“I’ve gone through a lot of stuff this year, I didn’t know how I was going to handle it,” he said. “Proud of the way I did. This is a whole ’nother animal. I have no clue. This is going to be really difficult.
“When I get done here, we’re going to talk to my vice captains. We sort of put everything on hold the last couple days. I think they were trying to leave me alone. But we’ll get in touch with them and get our final decisions together. Saw a lot of Americans play great today, which makes me happy.”