Fleetwood no longer a “nearly man” on the PGA Tour

The congratulatory messages came from those no less accomplished in sport than the person to whom they were directed.

From LeBron James. From Caitlin Clark. From Tiger Woods. From winners who perhaps better than the rest of us understood how it felt for a golfer named Tommy Fleetwood at last to become a winner on the PGA Tour.

And to do it in the final event of the Tour's crawl across the calendar and across the country.

No, pro golf is not over. It returns almost before we’re ready, a month from now, with the Procore Championship, September 11-14, at Silverado Country Club in Napa.  But Fleetwood’s drive(and putt) for a victory is over.

Fleetwood is from England, where our modern games were created. And there is a belief that taking part is just as important as being successful. And we’ve all been raised on the famous poem by Grantland Rice that when the great scorer comes to write against our name, he will judge not whether we won or lost but how we played the game.

And yet, we’re obsessed with victory or the lack of it.  Fleetwood’s career on the PGA tour, inevitably, was discussed in terms of what he hadn’t done, win, rather than about anything he had—including high finishes in the US Open. His streak, as we were reminded all too often, was 164 PGA Tour events without finishing first.

Similar to the Buffalo Bills—defined less by their many great seasons than by the fact that they’ve never won a Super Bowl.

Whether the negative references affected Fleetwood, we may never know until he stops competing. And since he is only 34, that probably will not be for quite a while.

Fleetwood showed his courage and skill in winning. He began the final round Sunday in a first-place tie with Patrick Cantlay, and the question was whether he could outlast Cantlay, who had won the Tour Championship four years ago.

We found out, and possibly Fleetwood found out about himself. This was the third time in the last two months he went into the final round in first or tied for first.

“It completes the story of the near-misses,” he said. “Winning on the PGA Tour was a step I wanted to take.”  

It’s a step every golfer on tour wants to take, needs to take. However, you wonder if we make too much about winning in sports, and forget about the other virtues of being in the battle. Do we recognize the effort required to play any game at a high level? Do we appreciate the job well done? That’s up to the individual.

The job Fleetwood did through the years was impressive, but it was judged incomplete. In Britain, they have a phrase for an athlete or sportsman who comes close but doesn’t come out on top: “nearly man.”  

If indeed that was the way some thought of Tommy Fleetwood, a revision is required.