Tommy Fleetwood makes other men feel things. He makes the biggest star in the sport wrap him up in a bear hug. He makes a 45-year-old major winner lock foreheads eye-to-eye in front of tens of thousands, knowing they’d go to war for him, and he for them.
He elicits this from teammates such as Rory McIlroy and Justin Rose. From the masses. From the assorted personalities he comes across in the day to day of a golfing life. As Team Europe began to run away with the Ryder Cup in September — as Fleetwood started 4-0 in foursomes and fourball with McIlroy and Rose — there was a sentiment from those all-time greats that it wasn’t just about the win. I did it with Tommy.
The 2025 golf season was a year of iconography. It was the year Scottie Scheffler won two major championships, elevating his status from elite player to golfing great. It was the year McIlroy completed the career Grand Slam with a green jacket, collapsing on the 18th green at the Masters in perhaps the most visceral sporting emotion seen in years. Those are moments and seasons that go down in history.
But the sneaky truth? This was the Year of Tommy. And it’s not because of the way he broke through. It’s because of the way he lost. The greater sporting world connected with him in a way it can’t with golf’s biggest phenoms.
For the better part of a decade, Fleetwood has been a successful, borderline great golfer, making Ryder Cup teams and ranking among the top 20 players in the world. Everybody liked Tommy. He was good. He was consistent. His claim to fame, though, was that he had never won a PGA Tour event, despite 30 top-five finishes. Ultimately, he was a secondary figure. Not the type of name a non-golf fan really knew.
However, at 34, the Englishman became golf’s main character. The type of athlete that made LeBron James, Tiger Woods and Caitlin Clark live and die with his journey. The kind of figure that somehow transcended golf. We, as a society, are not historically very kind to the quote-unquote chokers of the sporting world. Tommy felt different, though. People just wanted good things for him.
“I would never say I questioned how much he wanted. But, like, he’s always been so nice … so nice!” McIlroy told The Scotsman newspaper. “Then I’m like, ‘Is he too nice?’ Because you need to have that little bit of edge, prick in you, whatever you want to call it.
“I think it is harder for Tommy to feel that than others because of how nice and empathetic he is.”
So when it all happened for him, when Fleetwood went and won the Tour Championship in August, when he thrived as the undeniable best player at the Ryder Cup the next month, it broke through. He is a superstar. He’s one of the faces of the return of the Skins Game on Friday on Amazon Prime Video. This is his year.
Because Tommy is simply a good dude.
Todd Schuster — better known in the podcasting streets as Tron Carter — booked a flight and headed to Europe. If Tommy Fleetwood was going to win a major, he had to be there. Despite any best efforts at media neutrality, Schuster is Fleetwood’s biggest fan. The co-founder of the golf podcast behemoth “No Laying Up” was drawn to Fleetwood, starting with when he watched him compress a beautiful long iron on the back nine to win the 2018 Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship. He played golf the way Schuster wanted it played: pure ballstriking, accurate off the tee and a repeatable, throwback swing.
As much as Schuster loves an absurd bit and stubbornly keeps it going at all costs — he identifies as the Cleeks’ No. 1 fan — this one was real. He was invited to be a part of the celebration that night seven years ago. They’ve since podcasted together and sat for talks outside of clubhouses about their lives and careers. And seemingly every week on the show, Schuster would confidently boast that this would surely be the week Tommy won the big one.
So as Fleetwood contended early in the 2023 Open Championship, Schuster booked a last-minute flight from Florida to Hoylake outside Liverpool, fittingly 30 miles from where Fleetwood grew up. By the time Schuster connected in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, Fleetwood was already fading. By the time Schuster landed in Germany, it probably wasn’t going to be Fleetwood’s year. However, in disgusting, rainy weather, Fleetwood noticed Schuster in the gallery on the first hole on Sunday and stopped to say hello.
He finished tied for 10th, the latest in another year full of painfully close calls. After the round, Ian Finnis, Fleetwood’s longtime and perhaps equally beloved caddie, sought Schuster out and lured him into the temporary structure built for player, family and caddie dining. They shared some beers, a smile on Fleetwood’s face the whole time as Brian Harman prepared to celebrate his runaway victory. It was even Fleetwood’s idea to take a photo to post on social media as Schuster’s journey went viral.
“He frowned, and even while trying to frown, his eyes are still smiling,” Schuster said. “That pretty much sums him up.”
That was the quiet precursor to why Fleetwood went mainstream in 2025.
Justin Rose, left, and Tommy Fleetwood won two points together at the Ryder Cup. (Jamie Squire / Getty Images)
When Fleetwood led the Travelers Championship in June, it was already shaping up to be the sports story of the week. In a career defined by close calls — a missed eight-footer for 62 at the 2018 U.S. Open that would have sent it to a playoff, the final-round 74 in the 2019 Open Championship, or even Nick Taylor sinking a 72-foot putt to shock him at the 2023 Canadian Open — Fleetwood led Keegan Bradley by three shots with four holes to go.
However, he missed his birdie opportunities and bogeyed 16 and 18 while Bradley stuck his final approach to 5 feet to steal the signature event on network TV. The discourse was somehow less about the U.S. captain’s heroics than it was about Fleetwood’s pain. But it was even more about what he did after.
In an era of golf in which players are increasingly comfortable shirking cameras and microphones, nobody expected Fleetwood to say anything before leaving Hartford, Connecticut.
They were wrong.
“Right now I would love to, you know, just go and sulk somewhere and maybe I will,” he said, “but there’s just no point making it a negative for the future really, just take the positives and move on.”
The Travelers executives were on the 18th green posing for photos with Bradley, but upon returning to the clubhouse, found Fleetwood, as cordial as ever, eating dinner with his wife, Clare, and their sons. “They are just such nice people,” said Andy Bessette, executive vice president and chief administrative officer at Travelers. “They always want to be helpful. That’s who you want to win in life!”
Six weeks later, at the FedEx St. Jude Championship, the first round of the PGA Tour’s playoffs, Fleetwood had the lead again with 18 holes to play. “I just look forward to the opportunities and continue to give myself a chance in chasing my dreams,” he said that Saturday night, “and whether they happen or not tomorrow or the next week or the week after, that’s another story. But I’m looking forward to it nonetheless.”
This time, it was his Ryder Cup teammate Rose who won, after Fleetwood again stumbled in the closing holes. The next week, Fleetwood finished T4 at the BMW Championship. Sisyphus up the hill and things of that nature.
He’d won plenty overseas on the DP World Tour. He starred on multiple Ryder Cup teams. But somehow, he finished top five 30 times on the PGA Tour without a win. Nobody else in the past 40 years had even reached 20 without a win.
Fleetwood arrived at the Tour Championship in a particular position nobody envies; when everybody assumes you’re going to play well each week, but it won’t matter until it results in a win.
In the first iteration of a new Tour Championship format that neutralized Scheffler’s season-long dominance and put all 30 players head-to-head, the man who suggested it would be “pretty funny” if his first PGA Tour win also gave him the FedEx Cup did just that.
Seemingly every golfer still in Atlanta surrounded the 18th green to cheer Fleetwood on. The ever stoic Patrick Cantlay — playing with Fleetwood in the final group — even smiled from ear to ear as he shook Fleetwood’s hand. Rose stood on the hill with his phone out, filming like a proud dad. He FaceTimed Clare and their son, Frankie.
Because everybody in golf roots for Tommy Fleetwood, recognizing that none of it is performative. He’s just a good, unassuming dude.
“It just comes down to who you want to have a beer with on a basic level,” Schuster said. “(Finnis) and Tommy are at the top of that list.”
The biggest stars in sports, from James to Clark, posted on X about Fleetwood. Celebrities were not posting about Tommy Fleetwood 12 months ago. Then this year happened.
Congrats and 🫡 @TommyFleetwood1!!! That first one feeling is something else! Especially after dealing with adversity and shortcomings. Too 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🏆
— LeBron James (@KingJames) August 24, 2025
Awesome. Sports rock https://t.co/tF6hyMPq0P
— Caitlin Clark (@CaitlinClark22) August 24, 2025
“I think it’s easy for anybody to say that they are resilient, that they bounce back, that they have fight,” Fleetwood said. “It’s different when you actually have to prove it.”
In the media lead-up to the Skins Game, Fleetwood’s way-too-nice persona was the No. 1 target for jokes.
“He’s kind of known to have a bad reputation out here,” Xander Schauffele said. “Seriously anticipate him doing some dodgy things.”
Said Bradley: “If I said anything bad to Tommy, I feel like I’d have to apologize after.”
There’s an understanding that none of them are playing as well as Fleetwood these days. Much like Schauffele’s two major wins last season, there’s a quiet fear when a golfer such as Fleetwood breaks the seal. As noble and mature as he handled defeat, nobody with two eyes would deny it was in Fleetwood’s head. The collapse at the Travelers was the best example, but we also saw it at St. Jude and the 2024 Olympics. He looked unsure of himself in those moments. Maybe McIlroy was right, and Fleetwood just didn’t have that “prick” killer instinct.
Tommy Fleetwood wins again on the DP World Tour, his son, Frankie, joining him on the 18th green. (Prakash Singh / Getty Images)
Which is why this Ryder Cup could be terrifying for the rest of golf. By any underlying statistical metric, Fleetwood has been a top-10 golfer for years, but as he turns 35, he appears to be the best version of himself. He is now No. 2 on DataGolf, only behind Scheffler, but more importantly, he looked like a new man in New York. He was the most feared golfer in the field, hunting pins and starting 4-0, the lone man in the cup to win four matches.
Then, he went back across the Atlantic Ocean and finished up the DP World Tour season in a similar fashion. He won in India, finished solo second in Abu Dhabi and went on a late run at the DP World Tour Championship to finish one shot off the playoff.
It goes back to something European captain Luke Donald said at Bethpage: “When you have a player as good as him in a comfortable mindset and in a happy mode, in a happy place, you know, that’s a very dangerous Tommy.”
Rory McIlroy is the biggest star in golf. Scottie Scheffler is the best. Bryson DeChambeau has the most rabid following. But maybe, just maybe, Tommy Fleetwood is next up. Maybe he’s the one people connect with most, because he is normal. Because he works hard and keeps going. Because we’ve seen the entire journey and how hard it is to reach the mountaintop.
“He’s the guy you want your kid to grow up to be,” Schuster said. “Not because of the big moments, but because of the little ones. He cares about the people he meets along the way, he’s polite and grateful to tour employees, he’s authentic with fans, he plays fast, etc. All the little things add up.”
So as Fleetwood looked back on the biggest year of his golfing life, it was nice to see there’s been no change. He still gets it.
“This is what we practice for,” Tommy said. “These are the times of our lives, and I’m enjoying it very much.”
