Fleetwood aiming high after Race to Dubai triumph

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  • November 20, 2017

After winning the European Tour’s Race to Dubai, an ambitious Tommy Fleetwood reckons the sky’s the limit.

The Englishman was able to hold on and finish the season as European No 1 after a late stumble from countryman Justin Rose at the DP World Tour Championship on Sunday.

Fleetwood had made the race an interesting one heading into the final round after consecutive rounds of 65 left him just two strokes behind leader Rose.

And while like Rose he also failed to go on and win the title, finishing with a two-over-par 74, he was still rewarded for his impressive consistency throughout the season.

“This is the biggest day of my career for sure. The emotions were difficult on me because I don’t trust computers, so even when everything had finished, it was so difficult to get up or down,” Fleetwood said.

“Then I felt for Justin a lot, because I saw him when he came in. I think how gracious he was shows a lot about his character. It’s not sunk in yet. I had never done anything like this before, and it was actually quite an up-and-down week.

“The first day was poor and even the third day was up-and-down. And then today, obviously I didn’t perform how I wanted to, but it just shows golf can be such a cruel or difficult game sometimes. I’ve just shot 14 under for two days and then couldn’t get anything going at all.

“Justin had played unbelievable for three-and-a-half days and it was completely out of my hands after 12 or 13 holes. But it’s a massive learning curve seeing that still anything can happen, and it’s still definitely not sunk in.”

Having conquered Europe, Fleetwood has now set his sights on nothing less than becoming a top 10 player and eventually becoming No 1 in the world.

“My ultimate goal in life is to be the best player in the world, that will always be the same,” he added. “Whether I achieve it or not is another thing, but I’ll always strive for that. I think this year has been a big year in terms of my career. You know, some of the performances, I have put myself on the world stage a bit more.

“When we sit down after this year, we’ll make sure that the goals get high and lofty and that I push myself to achieve more. I’ve got a lot of experience in me after the last two, three years and I know that you can go down the wrong path very easily. But I think I’ve got people around me and myself included that know how to stay on the right path hopefully.

“I’ll always have high expectations but we’ll see where we can go. Like I said, the ultimate goal, and I think everybody in the profession should have that goal, is to try to be No 1 in the world.”

European Tour Tommy Fleetwood

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