By Kent Gray
Tommy Fleetwood has started the 2018 Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship like he ended the last one – with a piece of coveted silverware – but that’s about where the similarities with 12 months ago end.

The 26-year-old Englishman was presented with the European Tour’s prized Seve Ballesteros Trophy at his pre-tournament presser on Tuesday after being voted Players’ Player of 2017 by his peers.

It was the icing on a stellar year past which saw Fleetwood triumph in Abu Dhabi and France en-route to capturing the season-long Race to Dubai title, a giddy ride enhanced by the birth of his son Franklin and his marriage to Clare following Tiger Woods’ Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas last month.

It all adds up to a whole new level of expectation as Fleetwood prepares to defend the Falcon Trophy. It’s certainly an incomprehensive position compared to this time last year when he entered Abu Dhabi with a game showing green shoots of recovery following a dire 2016 but little hint that he would hold off a fast-finishing Dustin Johnson down the stretch on The National.

Now 18th in the world – he was 188th in 2016 and 100th 12 months ago – Fleetwood knows keeping a lid on his own expectations might be the trickiest challenge of 2018.

“Generally, the goals, I want more of the same. It’s easy to pick out tournaments that you want to win, and it’s easy to say, oh, I want to win a major, I want to compete in the majors and I want to make the Ryder Cup team but you have to remember to just keep progressing,” said Fleetwood.  “I know how easy it is to go off track.“

Fleetwood with the Seve Ballesteros award.

Contending in the WGC Mexico and holding off Johnson in Abu Dhabi helps Fleetwood believe he has the mental fortitude to push on.

“I just think the hardest thing about it is the better you get and the higher your expectations get, the less leeway you give yourself when you don’t play very well and it can get frustrating very easily,” he said.

“I feel like I have a good mind-set. I feel like I do the right things all the time and I do think that I put the hours in and I do the right things to make me a better player all the time. You just have to go out and play golf and trust that you’ve done the work and if it doesn’t go right, you have to go on to next week and do it.”

Fleetwood was asked if he had sought the counsel of any peers on how to cope with the new pressure. He hadn’t but Henrik Stenson, next in front of the international media, had some sage words following a busy 2017 in the wake of his major breakthrough at the 2016 Open when he edged Phil Mickelson in the epic “Duel of the ‘Sons’” at Royal Troon.

“Become better at saying no. Because that’s hard,” was Stenson’s key piece of advice.

“You have a great year and a bright future ahead of you, everyone wants five minutes, and you know, it’s only 24 hours in a day and every little bit you do is going to take away a lit bit of engery and a little bit of focus from what you need and should do. That’s a tough balance we face.

“There’s always a chance that he might come to a point where he feels like he’s a bit worn out because of everything he’s done. I don’t think he had the longest of breaks, either, between seasons. You’ve got to be watching that side but you figure it out as you go along. “

Fleetwood’s energy levels seem okay this week, no doubt helped by three wins from as many matches as Thomas Bjorn’s men retained the EurAsia Cup 14-10 in Malaysia.

Winning the Seve award is another spur.

“It’s actually made me the most emotional out of all of them [trophies he collected for last season], having it voted by the players,” said Fleetwood.

“There’s still so many guys [that he] looks up to and you watch people on the range and you try to learn from them. I’ve made a lot of friends and I think for people to vote for me…it’s something else. It’s very flattering, very humbling.”