By Kent Gray
After his second round in Abu Dhabi, Tommy Fleetwood spoke of the “great accomplishment” and “honour” of winning the 2017 Race to Dubai – and of the need to park his career best year and prove himself all over again.

“When you’re playing out there, nobody cares what you did last year. You’ve got to get on with it and you have to keep moving forward,” said the Englishman after a 68 kept his title defence on track and vindicated the Seve award he’d received on the eve of the Desert Swing opener after being voted Players’ Player of Year by his peers.

Fast-forward to Sunday and it’s fair to say last year is gone, if not forgotten.

With some masterful ball striking and red-hot putting, the 27-year-old scorched around the back nine of a wind-swept National course in a scarcely believable 30 strokes to sign for a 65 and join Martin Kaymer as a back-to-back winner of the Falcon trophy.

Related: Tommy’s honour again

“The biggest thing for us after last year, I had had the year of my life by a long, long way on the course.…was to make sure that we kept progressing, kept improving,” Fleetwood said in his champion’s press conference.

“We sort of really wanted to look at the year like, you know, if Justin Rose had shot level par on that back nine on Sunday [at the DP World Championship; Rose was two-over, slipped to T-4 and eventually finished runner-up in the season standings to Fleetwood], then I wouldn’t have had The Race to Dubai title.

“So it was sort of important to look at it that way; that maybe try and prove as if you were hurt and you had not had that whole euphoria of achieving something amazing in your career. So all the practice has been very good. Prepared well last week. Had a great week in Malaysia [helping Europe retain the EurAsia Cup], and then to sort of validate your position of Race to Dubai Champion or Player of the Year so early on is really sort of nice and satisfying.”

Fleetwood described coming into the week as defending champion as a “really strange feeling because you feel quite possessive over your trophy and you don’t really want to give it back. So that’s always been in the back of my mind this week.

“Luckily enough, I was playing well and I had a chance to win, and yeah, the back nine was a very special nine holes.”

The scintillating finish didn’t go unnoticed by Rory McIlroy who hailed Fleetwood as a “great addition to the world of golf, a great addition to The European Tour and will be a great addition to The Ryder Cup team in September.”

Related: McIlroy eyes Dubai after Abu Dhabi fairytale falls just short

“That’s very kind,” Fleetwood said after being made aware of the former world No.1’s plaudits.

“I had such a good time the first two days playing with Rory and Dustin who are potentially the two best players of our generation, potentially.

“So having that as a three-ball, it was great, although I still had my competitive fires going and I wanted to beat them. But yeah, any time you sort of play with the best players in the world is where you want to be, and whether you see yourself there or not, you want to be competing with them.

“And I want to go places in the game. So to have your peers talk about you like that, Rory, obviously has done it all in the game. So having people talk about you like that is very nice.”

The way Fleetwood is playing, expect him to be a central figure in golf’s global conversation more and more.