For Fleetwood, Open is a home game

HOYLAKE, England — Tommy Fleetwood is there again, here again, closing in once more on the major championship he has come so close to winning.

Not that in today’s world close is anything other than another word for frustration.

The Open, the 151st British Open, the tournament Fleetwood, a Britisher, an Englishman, most wants. The tournament his country most wants him to win.

This is Beatles territory Twist and Shout. This is Tommy Fleetwood territory. 

He was born and raised in Southport, 21 miles north of Liverpool. It’s the site of an enormous amusement park, a downscale Disneyland. It’s also the site of a great links course with Royal Birkdale, where a kid named Tommy Fleetwood would sneak into when the opportunity arose and would play as many holes as possible until chased off the course.

Fleetwood no longer has to sneak on any course. Or sneak up on the competition.

Want to know how much Fleetwood progressed? Study the first-day leaderboard. There, tied for first with scores of 5-under 66 at Royal Liverpool are Emiliano Grillo, Christo Lambrecht and Tommy Fleetwood.

Grillo, who is from Argentina, qualified for the Tour and won his first start at Silverado in the Frys Open in 2015. Lambrecht is a 23-year-old South African who plays for Georgia Tech — and won the British Amateur a few weeks ago at Hillside, up the road from Birkdale.

Fleetwood is 32 and not so much favored as hoped for, to be the first Englishman to win the Open since Nick Faldo in 1992.

When Fleetwood merely walked to the first tee, the crowd cheered as it would for one-time Premier League winner Liverpool. Or should we say Everton, which is the team Fleetwood has long supported.

“Yeah, it was so cool,” said Fleetwood. “They were so great to me today.”

He even spoke of performing in Goodison Stadium, Everton’s home park.

“I would love to play Goodison. I would love to give that a go. But yeah, they were great, from the first tee onwards, throughout the round, the way they were down the last hole there, the reception I got.”

Lambrecht also got his own rounds of cheering. At 6-foot-8, he is believed to be the tallest of anybody who has ever played in the Open. The Daily Telegraph called him “a giant.”

That would be a figure of speech. As far as we know, he never played baseball in San Francisco.