CROMWELL, Conn. — Tommy Fleetwood took a long pause. 

After falling a stroke short of claiming his first PGA Tour win with a bogey on the 72nd hole at the Travelers Championship, the Englishman was asked about the weight on his shoulders that remains. 

“Obviously, there’s a lot of chat about it,” Fleetwood said after a final round 2-over 72. “I think—I would have loved to have done it today, search goes on, I guess.”

The 34-year-old, who is ranked 17th in the world, has had 42 top-10s on Tour with zero wins, the most of all time. Second on that list is Brett Quigley with 34. 

Fleetwood led by three at 16 under entering the final round. And the anticipation of him getting over the hump was buzzing. He was aware of what was at stake. 

“I’m on top of a lot of stat lines for people that haven’t won on the PGA Tour, so to always be a No. 1 at something is always nice,” he said with a chuckle after the third round. “Yeah, of course I would love to win on the PGA Tour. I think it’s like an element of your career that everybody wants, and I of course want it.”

On Sunday, though, he didn’t have his best stuff. He began with a bogey on the first hole, then had two more on Nos. 3 and 4. But he didn’t drop on the leaderboard all afternoon. Despite a bogey on the par-3 16th, he went to the 18th tee box with a one-stroke lead. From the fairway with a wedge in his hand, he hit his approach 49 feet from the hole and then two-putted for bogey as Keegan Bradley birdied for the victory. 

Fleetwood ranked near the bottom of the field in almost every strokes-gained statistic on Sunday. His best was around the green, where he was 24th. 

“I felt like I scrapped well,” Fleetwood said, “but also there was a period where I felt like I got a grip of, like, two 3-putts early on, on 3 and 4 where you’re like, I hit a good shot into 4 out of the rough there … then you get to the end and, obviously, I didn’t really feel like I hit that many bad shots execution-wise, just sort of a couple of bad decisions and didn’t clean them up, which is pretty poor and things that I have to work on.”

Fleetwood now has six runner-ups on Tour, including falling short in a playoff at the 2023 RBC Canadian Open when Nick Taylor buried a 72-foot, walk-off eagle putt to win. 

It’s not exactly Greg Norman-esque heartbreak, but the shortcomings can intensify the pressure.

“In my mind,” Fleetwood said, “I’ve won loads of PGA Tour events, I just haven't done it in reality and I'm sure that time will come if I keep working.”

He’s not the only one who expects that to happen. 

“Tommy’s been a great player for a long time and he’s more than due,” Rory McIlory said. “He’s got so much talent and so much ability.”

And sometimes, delayed gratification is the most fulfilling. 

“When it happens it will be very, very sweet,” Fleetwood said. 

When, not if.


This article was originally published on www.si.com as Tommy Fleetwood Still Confident Despite Another Near-Miss on PGA Tour.

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