Bernie McGuire at St. Andrews
‘Proud’, ‘Incredible.’
Two words, the first chosen by Tommy Fleetwood and the second by Matt Fitzpatrick, to describe the experience of last week’s European success at the Ryder Cup.
In stark contrast to last week’s sauna-like conditions in Rome, the champion Ryder Cup duo were rugged-up in wintery gear ahead of this week’s Alfred Dunhill Links Championship here in Scotland.
The pair attended a pre-tournament press conference where one of the first questions to both was what time they each goat to bed on Monday morning post the Sunday victory celebrations.
“2am-ish” was Fleetwood’s response while Fitzpatrick hit the sack 30 minutes earlier, saying it was “nothing crazy, nothing crazy.”
“I did beat it but not by far,” said Fleetwood, breaking into a smile.
“The Sunday night of the Ryder Cup is such a cool and special night. I think when you get to celebrate with your teammates, and your family and the ones that have been there to support you, it’s just a very special night. The Ryder Cup is there in the middle of the party and you know it’s something that you’ve all achieved together. You’re having pictures with it and you celebrate, but from the moment we finished, it’s just such a high. I mean, I like that you assumed that I would be 1.30 and beat Fitzy but it wasn’t that far off.
“It’s definitely the highlight right now. I was relieved, I’m still relieved right now that we managed to do it. I think me — myself and Shane and Bob, we were having some physio in the morning at the golf club and all three of us said, we were joking, but we said we want no part of having to play a role in today’s singles. And it sort of became apparent that it might come down to one of us, and there was a lot — there was just a lot of red in the middle of the board but the games were still relatively close.”
Fitzpatrick had teamed with fellow US Open winning partner Rory McIlroy to deliver one of the biggest defeats on the Americans, cruising to a 5 & 3 win in the Friday afternoon fourballs but while losing out in his other two matches, Fitzpatrick was kind of still pinching himself when arriving at the Home of Golf.
“It was an amazing week, it really was,” said Fitzpatrick.
“You know, you go into the event beforehand, even with it at home, given a little more chance. But you look nine months out, three months out, the USA has got so much depth, it’s going to be really difficult for Europe to win.
“I think that kind of shows how the result is given or what happened before, really, with everything, with the players that they have and the depth that they have for us to go out there and play as well as we did and to get the Ryder Cup back shows how well we played”.
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