New Delhi: Tommy Fleetwood shone with a sizzling final round of 7-under 65 on a hazy Sunday afternoon to win the inaugural edition of the $4 million DP World India Championship by two strokes, leaving Japan’s overnight leader Keita Nakajima in his wake at the packed DGC course.
The Englishman’s eighth title on the European tour didn’t come easy as he had to ward off an unexpected challenge from New Zealand’s Daniel Hillier even as Nakajima, despite missing a bunch of birdie chances, managed his par putts as well as his position on the leaderboard for the better part of the day.
Fleetwood stayed calm and kept chipping away, dropping all but one shot on the second hole. Starting the final round two strokes behind overnight leader Nakajima in second spot, he opened with a birdie only to bogey the very next hole. He birdied the par-4 fourth before sinking three in a row from the seventh to make his way up.
“I think after three holes I was three behind Keita maybe, so people had started off fast. It’s one of those things, you never know when everyone is going to come. You just have to keep playing, keep focussing and not force things. Today I got my run from the fourth hole. I birdied 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, and I managed to make things happen there,” the 34-year-old Tour Championship winner said.
Nakajima, who shot seven birdies on the penultimate day, managed just three birdies – on the 7th, 12th and 17th – in an error-free final round. It would have been an excellent round on any other day, but when there was very little by way of challenge from the course and sustained pressure from Hillier and then Fleetwood, it wasn’t nearly enough.
Hillier, who carded 3-under on Day 3, hit seven birdies on Sunday, six of them coming in a stunning display of accuracy and precision on the first nine. The back nine, however, proved his undoing, yielding a solitary birdie to go with two bogeys, and a result-defining double bogey on the par-5 14th. Hillier held the sole lead coming to the 14th, but a wild second shot that sailed into the bushes sent him on a downward spiral.
Hillier endured a shot penalty there, but shaken by the wayward hit he went on to make a double bogey, which pushed him to the third spot. A bogey on the next hole dropped him to T-4 as Fleetwood surged. A consolation birdie on the 18th meant Hillier, after being in contention for most of the afternoon, finished at T-9.
Fleetwood, by contrast, was brilliant on the 14th where he chipped in for a birdie that gave him a two-shot lead, from where he was in control till the end.
“I actually looked at a leaderboard on the 14th. I was leading all of a sudden on my own and it looked like Hillier had struggled there. You’re not in control of what anybody else is doing. So, as much as I read the situation, I just know how important it is to bring myself back to focussing on me and dealing with my golf shot,” Fleetwood said.
“I think I played very, very well. I had some amazing momentum through the middle of the round from the 7th hole onwards. The iron shots I hit into 7, 8 and 9 were really, really great shots. I hit a couple of poor shots on 11th and 12th but managed to save par. I probably hit poor shots at the right time, into the right places. I managed my bad stretch well.”
As Fleetwood sealed victory, he was joined on the green for the celebrations by his young son Frankie as the fans packed around lustily cheered. It was a wish fulfilled for the youngster.
Fleetwood said: “We were at home last week and he just said, ‘Do you know what you’ve never done? You’ve never won a tournament and I’ve been able to run on to the 18th green’. I was like, ‘I’m writing that down’. All day today, I thought if I can put myself in a position where I can actually make that moment happen.”
The major winners Shane Lowry (T3, -18), Rory McIlroy and Brian Harman (both T26 -11) as well as Viktor Hovland (T6, -17) were all overshadowed by the man in red-hot form.
