The last time Tommy Fleetwood teed it up in a competitive round was a month ago at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, where he finished third.
However, when he got home for one of his first periods of rest in some time, he decided to start tinkering with his putting. He put a new TaylorMade putter in the bag, and on Wednesday in his pre-tournament press conference, he praised how he had practiced with it, but he was excited to put it to use in the heat of competition.
“To have that time at home to work on something that I’ve put a lot of effort into and something I’m really interested in; and like I said, TaylorMade have done an amazing job with it, and it’s felt good,” Fleetwood said.
After one round, it looks like a worthwhile equipment change.
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Fleetwood shot 10-under 62, tying the course record at Yas Links to take the first-round lead at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, the DP World Tour’s penultimate event on the schedule. He was the best putter in the field Thursday, needing only 26 putts, the lowest of any competitor in the field, and 1.5 putts per hole, which was second in the 70-player field. Fleetwood had eight birdies and an eagle en route to his record-tying round.
“Putted amazing,” he said. “Felt like I read the greens so well. Beautiful pace control and hit a lot of good putts and started holing them. I worked even all the way through to the last hole, I just hit perfect putts.
“When you shoot a 62, obviously everything is going to have gone very, very well. Just happy to have got off to a great start.”
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Fleetwood said through the second half of 2024 he felt he wasn’t getting everything out of his putting as he would’ve liked. He’s a longtime pupil of Phil Kenyon, the putting coach who helped Scottie Scheffler drastically improve on the greens this year.
However, Fleetwood ran into Ken Brown and David Howell, former Scottish and English, respectively, professional golfers, who started to discuss putting with Fleetwood, sparking him to make the change
Early on, the results are paying off.
“I’ve worked with Phil Kenyon for a long time. He’s an unbelievably putting coach. You know, I always feel like I’m a good putter. It doesn’t always show,” Fleetwood said. “I happened to bump into Ken and Howler on the course and we were talking about a couple of things. Working on how I move my head in my stroke in a couple of practice drills and what happens there.
“And it’s always nice to have a good discussion. They are two of the best putters I’ve ever met and any time you’re talking to those guys, you’re always going to pick something up.”
And pick up the first-round lead, he did. Fleetwood is in front by a shot over Thorbjorn Olesen and Johannes Veerman. Tyrrell Hatton is a part of the group T-4 at 8 under. Rory McIlroy, fresh off a revamped swing, shot 5-under 67 and is T-18.
“It felt okay,” the world No. 3 said. “Sort of gotten comfortable with doing this little rehearsal before I take the club back. It felt fine. I probably wasn’t as imaginative out there or I was sort of hitting very straight shots and I hit a couple where I didn’t really see the picture of what I was trying to do with the ball flight because I was thinking too much on what I was doing with the swing.”
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