41 top-10 finishes, 27 top-five finishes, and five runners-up in 158 PGA Tour starts, there was one glaring omission from Tommy Fleetwood’s PGA Tour résumé – a victory, but he finally looked set to put the unofficial ‘best player never to win on the PGA Tour’ burden to bed at the Travelers Championship.
Then up stepped Keegan Bradley, and the US Ryder Cup captain staged a last-gasp smash-and-grab to win his second title at the venue and championship he’s attended since he was a child.
Despite taking a three-stroke lead into the final round after a flawless, seven-under 63 on Saturday – a round where he hit all 14 fairways – it was never likely to be easy for Fleetwood, and a nervy start where he bogeyed three of his opening four holes proved that, though he did birdie the second, as did Bradley who found himself tied for the lead after four.
The Englishman steadied the ship with six successive pars and got his nose in front again when Bradley bogeyed the 10th and then doubled his advantage when he holed for birdie on the par-3 11th.
Fleetwood, Bradley and Russell Henley each birdied the par-5 13th, leaving Fleetwood two to the good from both his playing partners, and looked poised to edge further ahead when he hit his approach to six feet on 14 and both Bradley and Henley found the greenside bunker.
Bradley bogeyed, Henley got up-and-down for par, but Fleetwood’s putt drifted to the right and a glorious opportunity for a commanding lead drifted with it.
Just when it looked as though he was out of the running, Bradley holed an unlikely putt from near-40 feet on 15 to get back within two, and when Fleetwood and Henley both bogeyed 16, the Ryder Cup captain was back within one.
Henley’s race was run when he bogeyed 17, leaving Fleetwood one ahead playing 18 as both contenders found the fairway. Perhaps expecting adrenaline to become a factor but misjudging the extent, Fleetwood came up 50 feet short on approach, and Bradley piled on the pressure by wedging to six feet.
Henley chipped in from the greenside rough, but it was too little, too late, but Fleetwood now knew that he had to get down in two for a playoff. His first putt was tentative, coming up just short of Bradley’s marker. It was the worst possible result as, miss or make, he was giving Bradley the line and when his putt drifted right of the hole, the stage was set for the fan favourite to seal the most unlikely of comebacks.
Chants of “U.S.A, U.S.A, U.S.A” rang out when he rolled it dead centre, adding fuel to the flames of calls for him to have a playing role on the United States team at Bethpage.
“It was insane,” he said in the immediate aftermath. “The crowd and the atmosphere and the scene there, and I just did a great job of, like staying present, because that could have got me out of my routine, out of what I was doing, but I did a good job of staying in my little zone.”
He refused to be drawn on whether he was now looking at himself for team selection, though he did admit that winning a tournament had thrown a cat among the pigeons.
“I just wanted to be the captain and, of course, you know, this is what happens. But we’ll see. I’m going to do whatever I think is best for the team. Whether that’s me on the team — this certainly changes a lot of things. I was never going to play on the team unless I had won a tournament and so that’s changed, but we’ll see,” he smiled.
Fleetwood was naturally crestfallen.
“I haven’t been in this situation for a while,” he said. “I think, you know, when it sort of calms down — I’m upset now, I’m angry — when it calms down, look at the things that I did well, look at the things that I can learn from.
“I said yesterday I haven’t been in this position all year, so it’s been awhile, felt like I did a lot of good things, but there was things that I definitely can do better, and I have to do better. So I did plenty of things well enough this week to win, I didn’t do that, it hurts. When it calms down, the most stupid thing to do and the worse thing to do would be make a week like this a hindrance to what you do going forwards. I obviously played great, I put myself in a great position, I was leading the tournament for 71 holes. I just want to make sure that I can put myself in this position as soon as possible again and try and correct what I did this time.
“But like I say, right now I would love to, you know, just go and sulk somewhere and maybe I will do, but there’s just no point making it a negative for the future really, just take the positives and move on.”
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