PERFECT TIMING

Tommy Fleetwood picks an ideal time to win his first PGA TOUR title.

- SEAN MARTIN

Tommy Fleetwood doesn't curse often. He's a gentle soul, too kind and perhaps too proper an Englishman, to let four-letter words escape often from his lips. But the occasion felt appropriate when he and lifelong friend Ian Finnis shared the embrace they'd waited too long for.

“About (expletive) time,” the newly crowned FedExCup champion said.

After 163 PGA TOUR events, 30 top-five finishes and a half-dozen runners-up, Fleetwood could finally call himself a PGA TOUR winner. And not just that. The FedExCup champion.

By winning the season finale, he won it all. All 30 players in this year’s TOUR Championship started on even footing, and the week’s winner also would lift the trophy given for excellence over the entire season.

Fleetwood peaked at the right time. He was the best player over the past three weeks not named Scottie Scheffler. Few had played better since the summer started. It’s just that his best had not been good enough.

Until this week. A final-round 68 gave Fleetwood a 72-hole total of 18-under 262, good for a three-shot victory over Russell Henley and Patrick Cantlay.

“I think it’s easy for anybody to say that they are resilient, that they bounce back, that they have fight,” Fleetwood said. “It’s different when you actually have to prove it.”

Fleetwood, 34, had won eight times worldwide before this week, including some of the DP World Tour's biggest titles. He was a Ryder Cup stalwart. He was firmly ensconced among the game's elite. But winning in the United States was the inescapable hole in his resume.

That omission became especially glaring this year, as he continued to contend but suffered some of his most difficult defeats.