By Kent Gray
After all the drama on the course and the stressful wait in the scorers’ hut afterwards, after all the could haves and the should haves and maybes and impossible math, Tommy Fleetwood had done it and he felt, well, “quite strange”.

Courtesy of the most unexpected season of his life and a Sunday afternoon Justin Rose will rather forget, Fleetwood had become a Race to Dubai champion for life and instantly $1.33 million richer, his portion of the $5 bonus prize pool.

Rose seemed to have a third straight European Tour title and second season-long order of merit title in the bag at -19 with just seven holes of the DP World Tour Championship at JGE – and the season – to play. But as Fleetwood fretted in the scorers hut after signing for a demoralising two-over 74 and an eventual share of 21st place, Rose inexplicably imploded with three bogeys in a five-hole stretch from the 12th. Even a gritty birdie on the 18th wasn’t enough – the former U.S. Open and reigning Olympic champion signed for a 70, a share of fourth and finished a galling 58,821 points short of emulating his 2007 OOM glory.

One man’s disappointment turn out to be another’s muted joy.
“It’s the biggest day of my career for sure,” Fleetwood said before elaborating.

“The emotions were difficult on me because even — I don’t trust computers, so even when everything had finished, it was so difficult to get up or down. Then I felt for Justin a lot, you know, because I seen him when he come in. I think how gracious he was shows a lot about his character.

“Yeah, it’s not sunk in yet. It’s just such a — the whole week, I had never done anything like this before, and it was actually quite an up-and-down week.”

What did Justin say afterwards?

“Not a lot. He was really nice. He just said congratulations. It was such a hard thing to do. It was a tough scenario. I didn’t really — I didn’t feel like I could take any credit for what I had just achieved,” said Fleetwood.

“You know, because we are good friends and everything, and it’s just the nature of the game; somebody wins, somebody loses, and it was a difficult — it was just a difficult sort of situation.

“He was so good. He just said, “Congratulations.” He said, “Well deserved.” Fooch [Rose’s bagman Mark Fulcher] said, “You deserved it all year.” They were really nice about it and it was just a nice sort of moment.”

Indeed, it’s been a season of incredible moments for Fleetwood who admitted afterwards that he’d considered withdrawing from the 2016 BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth with his game at such a low ebb.

“I genuinely wanted to pull out because I didn’t think I could get it off the first tee. I was embarrassed how I was hitting it. In all honesty I was scared of what I was going to do.”

Things turned a corner when Fleetwood returned to his boyhood coach Alan Thompson and had his best pal Ian Finnis fling his bag over his shoulder. There were green shoots when he won the season opener in Abu Dhabi and he hasn’t looked back, contenting for the U.S. Open [finished fourth] and the WGC-Mexico Championship to prove he belongs in the game’s upper echelons. 

So how do you compute winning the season-long order of merit compared to your wins in Abu Dhabi and France along the way, Tommy?

“It turns out, it’s quite a strange one because you kind of — you’re always looking week-in, week-out. Just that’s the nature of what we do. So you literally concentrate one week at time a time. When you’re done with that week, you have a look at what was good, what was bad, and you move on to the next week, which is Monday.

“This week I finished 21 and I had a bad Sunday. Then you know, you’ve won The Race to Dubai. It’s like a really weird scenario. And like I say, it’s still not sunk in.

“The achievement of winning a year-long accomplishment is massive and it holds a lot of respect amongst your peers and the players. It shows sort of the level of consistency and the amount I’ve improved as a player and as a person. Yeah, it’s different for sure. It’s just I’m still trying to work it out to be honest.”

When he does eventually work it out, the feeling will undoubtedly be pretty sweet.