– Tommy Fleetwood doesn’t always seem to be there, but he always is. The Englishman has only won one Race to Dubai, in 2017, and this year he finished in seventh position. However, it should be noted that since that year, 2017, he has always finished among the top ten in the European ranking, except in 2021, when he was 15th. No one, except him, has finished among the top fifteen in the last eight seasons. Of course, players like Rory or Rahm have achieved great or better results during this time, but even they haven’t always finished among the top fifteen. Neither Hatton nor Fitzpatrick, for example, match these numbers in this period, although Tyrrell comes close: he has never won the European ranking, but he is also a regular in the final top ten.
Tommy also juggles the two major tours since 2018, which adds more value to the achievement. The Englishman only needs to break through and win in the United States, preferably a Major, to definitively become a heavyweight in golf history. Meanwhile, he continues to build an admirable, very solid career, step by step, from top ten to top ten. He is the atomic ant of world golf. Where is Tommy right now in the world ranking? Try it, dear reader, and answer this question off the cuff, without any chance of consulting…
Be honest: you placed the Englishman at Number 16 in the world, maybe 14, but Fleetwood is actually the current Number 9. It’s true that this is his ceiling, as he has never improved on that Number 9, but it’s also true that he has spent all of 2024 around that position.
– Fleetwood boasts seven victories on the DP World Tour, a figure that already places him on a very high rung. But if we look at the historical earnings list of the European tour, his career’s dimension is even better understood, as we already find him in an outstanding fifth position, only behind Rory McIlroy, Lee Westwood, Justin Rose, and Sergio García. Quite something. It’s true that the rising prize funds somewhat distort the career money list, but some players like Fitzpatrick, Hatton, or Lowry, contemporaries and even with more years on the European tour than Tommy, are far behind. Even Jon Rahm himself is, although the Basque, due to his age, arrived later. Watch out, therefore, for the Fleetwood ant, who continues to gather excellent performances in any month of the year and on any tour.
– Yes, on any tour. As mentioned, he hasn’t won in the United States yet, but in his first full season on the PGA Tour (2018), he already reached the last of the three FedEx Cup playoffs and finished in 19th place in the ranking. In fact, in four of the seven seasons he has played on the American tour, he has managed to reach that last playoff, the Tour Championship, where only the top thirty play.
– And now let’s go with Rory McIlroy, the guy who has won the Race to Dubai three consecutive times (2022, 2023, and 2024) and now has six in his career. It has been repeated ad nauseam: he ties with Seve with those six victories and is two short of the ‘unreachable’ record of Colin Montgomerie (eight wins), which now seems somewhat less unreachable…
– Let’s go with other details that may have gone more unnoticed. To date, only two players had won three consecutive European tour rankings. Seve did it in 1976, 77, and 78, and Monty did it too, who not only won three in a row but went on to string together seven (1993-1999). This record of the Scotsman does seem unreachable, to be honest.
– But Rory, let’s not forget, is the player who has won the FedEx Cup the most times, three, and has nine victories in the two most important rankings in the world. Six in the European tour and three in the PGA Tour. In this regard, the Northern Irishman stands out above anyone.
– A very impressive fact: in eight of the last thirteen seasons (2012-2024), Rory has won at least one of the two major rankings, the PGA Tour or the DP World Tour, although in 2022 he hit the jackpot, as he won both. Only two players in history have achieved this double, by the way, Rory in 2022 and Henrik Stenson in 2013.
