Player Blog: Tommy Fleetwood

Ahead of the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play, Tommy Fleetwood writes about golfing ups and downs, an acting career that never was, modern golf fashion, reading Charles Dickens, dogs and more…

It’s only March but I’d say I’m already in the middle of the season of my life. It’s funny how golf can do that. It’s cool. You never quite know when it’s going to come and go but at the moment, while things are good, I’ve just got to keep enjoying it. I’ve played great but last week was a good example of how things go in cycles: I had a really bad Thursday, shot 78, but then came straight back with a 66 on Friday. When you’re playing well, and things are going great, you seem to catch the breaks.

Golf is a funny game. Before things came back together last year, you could say I was in a bit of a slump. I peaked at 47th in the world at The Open in 2015, when I shot a good first round and literally the next day had a terrible round and my game never came back for a year. I was properly struggling. I had the odd top 20 – which was everything I had – but it was mostly missed cuts and firing it all over the golf course. Practice sessions would sometimes go alright but when I got out on the course it was always hard work. My main strength has always been my driving and I couldn’t even do that. I tried to change my swing to be a world-class player, a top ten, top five player, and I couldn’t make the changes I thought would do that. I couldn’t make it work. At the time, I didn’t realise that golfers have a way that they swing it and it’s very hard to change that or go against what you have been born with and been doing for 24 years. So I went back to my old coach Alan Thompson, who has known my swing since I was 13, and he knows better than anyone what it takes for me to play my best golf. In a sense, we’ve gone back to my basics but also added a lot, too.

Winning in Abu Dhabi was just the culmination of a long period or improvement. It was a massive goal. At one point last year I was just trying to make cuts to make any money but as everything came together we started targeting the top 60, the DP World Tour Championship, thinking that would be a decent outcome considering the struggles. By the time we got into the start of the 2017 season, with events like Hong Kong, I was already thinking about winning. Thinking, hoping it would just be a matter of time – which it did turn out to be. Getting over the line in Abu Dhabi was just the final piece in the jigsaw.

As well as the win, there are a lot of other things I’m thankful for right now.I’m in a great place off the course too and a lot of that is down to my amazing fiancé Clare, who is also my manager. She is definitely my soul mate and we are very lucky to have such a great life together.

Everyone wants to know more about my caddie than me these days! He’s been great. Ian (Finnis) and I have been mates for a very long time and we must’ve played ten million rounds of golf together over the years. He caddied for me when I was an amateur and when I first turned pro and we’d always said that if the opportunity came up again we’d like to try it again. There were lots of things to consider – he’s got a family, a job and was a pro at my golf club Formby Hall. When the chance came up I asked him but genuinely didn’t know what he was going to say because, to be perfectly honest, I was playing rubbish. It was touch and go, though, because there was that period when I was working on my game and we weren’t making much money – either of us. He showed a lot of faith in me in those darker times. We’ve got a very strong friendship and we know each other very well so it makes everything easier. There’s the two ends of the spectrum: one, it’s great having your mate and somebody you trust with you for all those hours or hard slogging, when you’re struggling, with neither of you saying a word of complaint, and then two, a couple of months later, when you’re coming down the stretch in Abu Dhabi, or at a WGC, you’re nervous, but you’ve got your best mate next to you. There’s no one better to have there at those moments.

I enjoy pushing the fashion boundaries in golf. It’s a bit of fun, isn’t it? I’ve had some pretty long hair in the last couple of years, tried the bandana/headband look at one point, and now I’m liking wearing some tapered trousers, too. Why not? Golf is moving into the future with new formats and new rules, so why not in fashion too. The reactions have not always been entirely positive – to say the least – but I’ve got a thick skin and I don’t take any of it too seriously.

I have a couple of really close mates on Tour, actually. Matt Nixon has been one of my best mates for years and he’s just got his Tour card back and Chris Paisley is probably the other one. I played England Golf with those guys a lot back in the day and we are very close.

I don’t talk about it much but I would’ve loved to have worked in the theatre if I wasn’t a golfer. People laugh at me about this, but I would’ve loved to have given theatre and some acting a go. I did drama at school and actually got an A-star and was seriously contemplating going to drama school after I left high school but decided to give full-time golf a proper go instead. It’s all worked out ok, obviously, but I still like to think about it a bit. I would’ve either been an actor or someone working behind the scenes on the production side, I really enjoyed that side of it too. I’d definitely give acting a go, I like being in the spotlight! It would’ve been the next best option after golf because I’m not much good at any other sports…

Away from the course I read a lot, I like that more than watching TV. I either like crime thrillers or, like a lot of us out here, I read a lot about sport and psychology and also the odd business book. I like stories really, though. At the moment, I’m halfway throughGreat Expectationsand that is a bloody hard read! It’s going to take me about three years I think but I reckon it’ll be worth persisting with. I’ve bought a few nice classic books recently so I’m going to make my way through some of those next.

I love my dogs.I grew up with two Yorkshire Terriers and then we had Maisie so at one point we had three dogs in the house. I can’t help loving them. We have Cookie and Benji now. They are always so happy to see you, they’re great company, they’re there whenever you need them, they never argue back. It’s unconditional love.

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