Ryder Cup 2018: Tommy Fleetwood and Francesco Molinari forge Europe’s formidable bond
On a sparkling day for Team Europe, the stoic Fleetwood was the architect of Europe’s miracle comeback, forging a supreme partnership with Molinari – Moliwood? – that may well be the key pairing of the weekend
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Your support makes all the difference.Let me tell you the moment I realised I loved Tommy Fleetwood. It was on Thursday night, at the opening ceremony, shortly after the Friday fourball pairings had been announced. Fleetwood and Francesco Molinari, both wearing suits and looking about as comfortable in them as Don Draper would look in a visor and plus fours, are being interviewed by the Golf Channel about their morning match-up.
“Taking on *Tiger Woods* and *Patrick Reed*,” the interviewer asks, wringing every last drop of import out of those two names. “What are your emotions once you found out who you would be playing?”
At which point, Fleetwood meets his questioner with perhaps the greatest, most disdainful shrug ever committed to camera. It’s not scorn, exactly, so much as pure, blithe Southport indifference. Like someone’s just asked him whether he fancies pizza or chicken for his tea. Or what he thinks of the Liberal Democrats. He genuinely couldn’t give the tiniest.
“It… it didn’t make that much difference, really,” he eventually drawls, realising he has to say something. “There’s 12 guys on the other side. And you’ve got to play two of them.”
Chances are, if you were about to play one of the world’s greatest ever golfers in your first ever Ryder Cup match in your first ever Ryder Cup, your reaction would probably be a little more animated than that. But then, this is Fleetwood through and through: unflappable, imperturbable, on the course and off. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Tiger Woods in the Ryder Cup or a leisurely nine holes on a hungover Sunday morning. He still wants to beat you just the same.
They call him the Jesus of the fairways, and on a sparkling day for Team Europe, the stoic Fleetwood was the architect of Europe’s miracle comeback, forging a supreme partnership with Molinari – Fleetinari? Moliwood? – that may well be the key pairing of the weekend. Europe’s afternoon points rush would have been inconceivable without Fleetwood and Molinari turning around their morning fourball against Woods and Reed, coming back from two holes down to win 3 and 1 and finally get Europe on the scoreboard.
The key to their success is as much temperamental as it is technical. Watch them strolling around the course in the lazy French sunshine and you could be forgiven for thinking they were just a couple of mates on holiday. Molinari is the chatty one, chirping away in his ear, Fleetwood the laid-back wisecracker, returning the crowd’s banter, stroking the luxuriant long hair and stubbly beard that he says makes him look like the “lowest-grossing movie star of all time”. When you’re playing the most fraught, knife-edge competition of your life, it’s hard not to see that as an advantage.
“I love him,” said Molinari. “What can I say? I love him. We enjoy playing together, and spending time together. He’s played amazing this morning and this afternoon. I just think we combine really well.”
Fleetwood, for his part, is equally warm about Molinari. “I’m so happy to be out with Fran,” he said. “We’re just good friends. And I think our games match up together well.”
The acid test of a foursomes partnership is how well they get each other out of trouble. Perhaps the pivotal hole of their afternoon match against Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas was the 5th, when Molinari’s weak chip left Fleetwood a tricky 15-footer for par, with Spieth standing hungrily over his own eight-foot putt. Fleetwood holed, a perturbed Spieth missed, and all of a sudden Europe were 2up and away.
The next hole, it was Open champion Molinari’s turn to return the favour. Fleetwood’s drive to the par-four 6th went so far left it was practically in Orsay. But Molinari flopped the ball brilliantly to just 12 feet, the Americans somehow contrived to three-putt from the edge of the green, and from potentially going behind, Europe had a three-hole cushion.
They may look like an unlikely partnership, but Fleetwood and Molinari could well be the key to Europe’s chances of recapturing the Cup: two of their in-form players forming the sort of formidable bond that gives opposition captains headaches. Two points out of two have already marked them out as Europe’s power couple, the duo to watch, not that either was prepared to get carried away on Friday evening.
“There’s still a job to do,” Molinari declared. Fleetwood, meanwhile, was more preoccupied with another landmark: the first birthday of his son Franklin. Days scarcely get more special than this. Even if you’d have a hard time getting him to admit it.
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