Tommy Fleetwood can finally call himself a PGA Tour winner, claiming 2025 Tour Championship
Adam SchupakAfter holing his final putt, Tommy Fleetwood tilted his head back and let out a primal scream on the 18th green that was a cocktail of pride, relief, and joy.
That's because he can finally call himself a PGA Tour winner. In his 164th Tour start, the 34-year-old Englishman not only won the Tour Championship in Atlanta on Sunday for that elusive first Tour title but claimed the FedEx Cup, too, and its $10 million first-place prize.
The 34-year-old Englishman shot a final-round 2-under 68 at East Lake Golf Club and beat Patrick Cantlay and Russell Henley by three strokes to win the third and final leg of the FedEx Cup playoffs.
Fleetwood, of course, has won seven times previously on the DP World Tour and three more times around the world but had banked more than $33 million on Tour, the most money of any player on the circuit without a victory. Along the way he had 30 top-5 finishes on Tour, a total that was the most by any player without a win in the last 40 years, and six times had been a bridesmaid. He had knocked on the door so many times that his knuckles were bruised and bloodied.
“I feel like I’ve been a winner on the PGA Tour for a long time, but it’s always been in my mind,” he said. “It’s finally a reality.”
When he was a child, Fleetwood and his father, Pete, used to sneak on to Royal Birkdale in Southport, England, and he dreamed of being one of the best golfers in the world. Too many times he had walked away from tournaments knowing he’d given the tournament away. With each heartbreak, Fleetwood kept getting back on the horse and believed that the next time he’d get into contention would be the week he’d finally win.
“It shows how great of an attitude he has towards the game, how resilient he is,” said Rory McIlroy.
Fleetwood, who topped the field in putting for the week, gaining more than 8 strokes in Strokes Gained: putting, or more than double his nearest competitor, got off to a great start in the final round with a 20-foot birdie putt at the second. It was one of 12 putts from 10 feet or longer he made during the week, tied with Ben Griffin for the most in the field. He made a bogey at the fifth but bounced back with birdies at Nos. 6 and 7. It didn’t hurt his chances that Patrick Cantlay, who shared the 54-hole lead with Fleetwood, opened with bogey-double bogey, and world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, who was lurking four strokes back, hit his opening tee shot out of bounds left and made bogey, the first of two bogeys within the first five holes. Scheffler rallied and got within two strokes of the lead briefly but rinsed his tee shot at the par-3 15th. He settled for 68 and finished T-4.
“I felt like I could have been a little sharper the last few days to give myself a better chance,” Scheffler said. “But overall, now I have a little time to reflect on the season, and it was a really good year. I have some stuff that I can try and improve on, and that's what I'll start focusing on after the Ryder Cup.”
Keegan Bradley, the U.S. Ryder Cup captain who had pipped Fleetwood at the Travelers Championship in June, was tied for second at the turn but fell victim to 15, too, pushing his tee shot into the water and making double. He signed for 70 and finished T-7.
It turned out Fleetwood’s biggest foe wasn’t Cantlay, who closed in 71, Scheffler, Bradley, or Henley but an internal battle with himself.
He held a three-stroke lead at the turn but a two-stroke swing at the 10th when he made bogey and Cantlay canned a birdie cut the lead to one. This was the moment of truth for Fleetwood and he passed with flying colors.
“You have to deal with those little demons that are in the back of your mind, and doubt creeps in. You remember what you got wrong, don't want to get it wrong again, and you have to force yourself to think of the positives,” he said.
The little demons that have held him back from victory for the better part of a decade had one final stand.
“I felt like I'd lost my swing a little bit, lost my timing, lost my transition, hit a big hook off the 10th, and all my focus kind of went into my rehearsals, changed my rehearsals a little bit, changed my tempo, tried to find my transition a bit,” he said. “All my focus kind of went into that.”
Was this going to be another back-nine fade for Fleetwood? Just in the last few months he had built up a lifetime of scar tissue. He squandered two great chances to find the winner’s circle, blowing a two-stroke lead with four holes to go at the Travelers Championship and a two-stroke lead with three to go in Memphis just two weeks ago at the FedEx St. Jude Championship, the first leg of the playoffs.
This time, Fleetwood got the job done. He responded by hitting his approach to 5 feet at No. 12 and to 6 feet at 13 for back-to-back birdies. His lead swelled to three strokes again. He gave a stroke back at the devilish 15th but only needed three pars down the stretch to sign for a 72-hole total of 18-under 270.
Through all the close calls, Fleetwood kept a brave face and found a positive spin. LeBron James and Caitlin Clark both separately posted messages of support on their social channels, and good friend Justin Rose, who had clipped him a few weeks before in Memphis, winning a playoff over J.J. Spaun, videoed the 18th hole celebration on his phone. "This feels as good as winning myself," Rose wrote on the X platform.
Fleetwood could have been deflated by his failures but he remained confident that it was only a matter of time before he tasted victory. He became the first player since Chad Campbell in 2003 to make the Tour Championship his first Tour title, picking a good time to do so as he went home with not one but two trophies and the largest official check in Tour history.
“It completes the story of the near misses and it has a crescendo to what has been building towards the back end of the season. But when I go home, I'm just going to start practicing again. I'm going to start working again, and I'm going to look towards the next tournament,” Fleetwood said. “I am really pleased that I can be proof that if you do all the right things and you just keep going that it can happen.”