Tommy Fleetwood owns a rare piece of the U.S. Open history that brings him a strong sense of pride. It also irks the hell out of him.
Only two men have shot 63 or lower in the final round of the championship—Johnny Miller and Fleetwood. And Fleetwood has done it twice. But while Miller famously blazed to victory in the 1973 U.S. Open at vaunted Oakmont Country Club, Fleetwood on neither occasion took home the trophy for his efforts in 2018 at Shinnecock Hills or 2023 at Los Angeles Country Club.
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It’s irksome because on each occasion he easily could have carded 62 with makable putts on the 18th hole, and also because, well, there was no ultimate payoff. Footnotes are reserved for the losers, no matter how valiant their efforts in defeat.
“Yeah, some great golf in there for sure, but tournaments are 72 holes,” said Fleetwood, who returns to Shinnecock Hills in Southampton, N.Y. for his 11th U.S. Open appearance. “If you don’t finish first then the job is incomplete, isn’t it?”
Indeed. And that also goes for the two rounds in question, both of which ended in disappointment. Unfinished business always leaves an empty feeling. Fleetwood can relate.
Consider his closing 63 on the North Course at LACC. Want to know the first thing he thinks about that day? “I played amazing, but three-putted the first [for par] and missed a short one on the last,” the 35-year-old Englishman said after finishing T-4 two weeks ago at the Memorial Tournament in Dublin, Ohio. “Wasn’t ever in the tournament, really. It was a nice score. That’s about all.”
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Fleetwood, who missed a seven-footer for birdie at the last, ended up at five-under 275 for the championship, tied for fifth and five strokes behind winner Wyndham Clark.
Not much of what you might call “woulda, coulda, shoulda” there.
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Mike Mulholland
That’s not the case with his 2018 final round at Shinnecock. Fleetwood still rues the wayward eight-foot birdie attempt that not only kept him from what would have been the first 62 in the championship—since accomplished by Rickie Fowler and Xander Schauffele in the opening round at LACC—but also left him a stroke shy of Brooks Koepka’s winning score of one-over 281.
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Interestingly, he confessed to not remembering much more about that round besides his missed putts at 17 and 18. Maybe it’s just as well.
Fleetwood played impeccably, recording eight birdies—including four in a row starting at the 12th hole—against one bogey. He hit 13 fairways and 16 greens in regulation. And he gave himself great birdie looks on the final three holes, only to see his putter go cold just at the wrong time. First, he couldn’t get a 13-footer to fall on the 16th hole and then a 19-foot birdie try went asking at 17. On the tough par-4 home hole, Fleetwood struck a 6-iron approach from 196 yards that left him an eight-footer straight up the slope. Or so he thought. His ball veered right at the end. He tilted his head back with a pained expression before tapping in.
“That’s the putt that will play on your mind because that’s the last shot you hit,” Fleetwood said at the time. “But your score is your score.”
As that day wore on, he realized the significance of missing those putts down the stretch. “I was there waiting around watching Brooks, and, yeah, at first I just wanted to shoot 62, but then I saw I had a chance to win,” he said at the Memorial. “If you ask me which 63 was better, I say Shinnecock because of the conditions and the pressure of having a chance to win. It was a superb way to close out a major. I was right there at the end waiting to see if it was good enough. It wasn’t, but I really gave it a go.”
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Ranked sixth in the world, Fleetwood hopes to give it another go at Shinnecock while trying to avoid having to shoot 63 again to have a chance to win his first major. The PGA Tour’s reigning FedEx Cup champion begins the championship Thursday on the No. 10 tee at 7:52 a.m. EDT paired with Rory McIlroy and Ludvig Aberg.
“Got a big summer coming up, and hopefully I can continue to play well,” he said. “I feel like the two weeks off [before the Memorial] did me good and I worked on good things and practiced well. And it showed. I find this golf course [Muirfield Village] difficult in terms of how it sits on my eye. So the fact that I could play really well round here means a lot to me. I just hope it continues.”
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