It was Wednesday at Augusta National and Frankie Fleetwood, aged 7½, was in front of a microphone after a Kid Canute-like attempt to defy a huge expanse of water during the father-and-families’ par-three contest. He cocked his head and gently, with hand-me-down vowels and intonation, said: “I’ve been practising as hard as I can, just not reaching it this year … but I’m trying my hardest.” His father laughed and his son’s words became a slogan.
It had been a trying time for Tommy Fleetwood, aged 34½. His near-misses on the PGA Tour had made him a cause célèbre. Slaughtered, gutted and heartbroken, he squandered leads in Connecticut and Tennessee. One of those to take advantage of his wobbles was Keegan Bradley, whose Travelers Championship triumph fuelled calls for the Ryder Cup captain to take his clubs to Bethpage Black this week.
It had been five years since another Ryder Cup captain, Paul Azinger, had said victories in Europe were fine and dandy but Fleetwood really needed to win on the PGA Tour to prove himself. By the time Fleetwood did win in the United States, at the Tour Championship last month, at the 164th attempt, basketball megastars LeBron James and Caitlin Clark were providing running commentaries on social media. It is not only God who loves a trier.
That history means a Ryder Cup win on American soil, for only the third time this century, would be sweet enough to be a health risk. Fleetwood was the man who sealed the victory in Rome two years ago against Rickie Fowler. In Paris in 2018 his partnership with Francesco Molinari was so fruitful that wags on the DP World Tour media team convinced them to climb into bed together with the gold cup while they compared each other’s performance. Despite the drubbing at Whistling Straits in 2021 his points tally is a healthy eight from three appearances with a 100 per cent record in foursomes.
Fleetwood formed a magnificent and memorable partnership with Molinari … both on and off the course
But back to Frankie’s statement. “It was completely out of the blue,” Fleetwood says. “He has his little tantrums now and again but got asked that question and came up with that. He’d obviously listened to me say that enough times — ‘I’m just trying my hardest.’ Quite often, and especially at the Tour Championship, there was a bit of a cult following that kept shouting at me in an English accent, ‘I’m just trying my hardest.’ It kind of carried on around the world.
Fleetwood was even gifted a ball marker celebrating the phrase. “I was using it at the Open and every time I put it down, I’d see these words “just not reaching it this year”. It clicked that I was playing a major with a marker that was telling me it was not going to happen for me. I thought, ‘I need to change this.’ ”
Fleetwood’s stepson, Frankie, won the hearts of golf fans at Augusta
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He had been playing so well. A beautifully pure ball-striker, Data Golf rates him the third-best player in the world after Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy while the Official World Golf Ranking has him at No7, but he was penning a great story with a muddled ending.
“It was not that I never thought it would happen, but obviously you have doubts,” he says. “I was continuously putting myself in that position but in doing that I was inviting more pressure. So there’s relief, there’s happiness, there’s satisfaction and joy. But I was conscious about looking ahead quickly because you can’t live or die by the good.”
That line has traces of Scheffler’s “what’s the point” confessional at the Open. In Northern Ireland the world No1 shook off the shackles of flat-bat platitudes to suggest the euphoria of winning lasted only a few minutes. Of course, he went on to win. Fleetwood empathises. “Sometimes it’s going to last longer, sometimes less. There’s a really good quote from Martina Navratilova who said, ‘The moment of winning is far too short to live for.’ As someone who hasn’t won that much, I’ve always remembered that. When I make my 165th start I’ll want to win that too and I will have moved on.”
By now most people will know Fleetwood is a good egg. Nice bloke, polite, as down to earth as any son of a tarmac layer should be. Family matters. He has two stepsons as well as Frankie. One of them, Mo, was in hospital after spinal surgery when he won at East Lake.
It was not the first health issue to affect his inner circle. Last year his caddie and best man, Ian Finnis, admitted he was scared he was going to die after having open-heart surgery. “They told me I was going to pop my clogs if I didn’t have an operation,” he told me after bacteria had infected his heart. Yet he still found time to defend Fleetwood from the mounting snipers. “Just because Tommy’s nice doesn’t mean he hasn’t got a winning mentality,” he said.
Fleetwood tells me he bumped into Azinger at East Lake just before his landmark win and, although others were offended on his behalf, he now says the American did have a point. “I saw him and he said how well I was doing and I was going to get there. That was cool.
“It didn’t bother me, and I always make a point of not trying to be too emotional either way. If I ever read anything I try and learn, and you might find someone gives an opinion and you think, ‘That makes sense.’ I’ve always wanted to win on the PGA Tour and do it multiple times. He did have a point because I play in America for 20 weeks a year.”
Fleetwood’s popularity is such that it is hard to envisage him bearing the brunt of the well-oiled crowds at Bethpage but he says he will be ready for it. Luke Donald gave an early indication of how seriously he was taking the issue of the crowd at the Team Cup in January when Fleetwood won the decisive point for Justin Rose’s GB & Ireland team against a Continental Europe team led by old pal Molinari. As players teed off, “USA, USA” was played through the sound system and an American comic was employed to heckle players.
The more easily mockable Tyrrell Hatton said he was called a Tesco bouncer and an Amish farmer, but what did Fleetwood get? “He actually mentioned that I hadn’t won on the PGA Tour,” he says with a chuckle. “Look, it’s impossible to replicate what you go through at a Ryder Cup but I think you can do things that challenge the same mental skills. That’s what Luke has tried to do. If it helps 0.0001 per cent, it’s going to help give us the best chance of doing what has seemed almost impossible in recent years.
“We’ve dreamt about being in these situations at Ryder Cups and the crowd is a visually big part of those dreams and feelings. The crowd this year isn’t going to be in our favour one little bit, but we have to enjoy that. It’s an atmosphere we’ve never experienced before and that’s a really great thing.”
Fleetwood has an impressive Ryder Cup record, and here celebrates beating Rickie Fowler in 2023
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Two years ago Europe dominated with Fleetwood forming a winning foursomes combo with McIlroy. I wonder what he made of McIlroy being restrained in the parking lot as emotions boiled over. In a statement of candid passion at odds with golf’s genteel traditions McIlroy would even call Patrick Cantlay “a dick” in one interview. Cantlay is also back for more this week, perhaps even revenge.
“We were all very motivated by it and it was good to get a bit of fire going,” Fleetwood says. “We were all supportive of Rory, of course you are, and it gave the singles an edge.” Could he imagine himself squaring up to anyone in a New York parking lot? “It’s not really my character but you never know what happens at a Ryder Cup.”
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He is, though, a man in rare form. He has had six top-five finishes in 2025 and eight top-tens. He concedes that he was disappointed by his major season — 16th at the Open and 21st at the Masters were the picks — but his consistency has been hugely impressive.
And for all the hullabaloo about his America hoodoo, the fact is Fleetwood has long liked the big American stages. He has been in the top five at each of the US majors, finishing runner-up at Shinnecock Hills when he missed an eight-foot putt for a play-off and the first 62 in US Open history. In that 2018 aftermath the winner, Brooks Koepka, not a man easily given to platitudes, said Fleetwood was “incredible” and would “definitely win some majors soon”.
That has not happened, but he always fronts up. Media snubs may provoke soundtracks played by the world’s tiniest string section, but it throws more light on his nature given McIlroy, Collin Morikawa and Shane Lowry have been questioning the need for post-round interviews this summer.
So why does he always do it? “First and foremost, I think it’s part of the job. It’s the right thing to do.” However, there is also a practical aspect to it. “As much as you might want to creep into a hole when you feel you’ve let it go, I’ve always felt that when I speak after a round I get the words out. It’s part talking to everyone but part talking to myself. Like journalling. It’s almost getting a head start on sorting it out in my mind. There are times when you will enjoy interviews and times when you don’t, but I feel like I have an obligation.”
This time he believes Europe’s near identikit team from 2023, other than an identical twin in Rasmus for Nicolai Hojgaard, will help after the “transition” from the team of Ian Poulter, Lee Westwood and Sergio García. “We definitely lost some big names and personalities and the story then was what’s going to happen now, but fast-forward a few years and we’ve got almost the same team. It’s amazing how quickly that has changed.”
With Fleetwood, one monumental hurdle has been scaled this year. Whatever happens this week, you can be sure golf’s nice guy will be trying his hardest to clear another.
Ryder Cup
Bethpage Black, New York
Friday-Sunday
TV Sky Sports