Total Game Plan

Tommy Fleetwood offers his best on-course tips, from hitting long drives to making better decisions

- Tommy Fleetwood with Jeremy Ellwood

Six-time DP World Tour winner Tommy Fleetwood has been a permanent fixture inside the world’s top 50 since March 2017, claiming that year’s Race to Dubai title and producing Ryder Cup heroics on his 2018 debut in Paris. Even when not performing at the peak of his powers, he remains among the game’s elite because of the levels of reliability and consistency he has been able to build into all elements of his game.

Here, the Southport man explains how he goes about getting the very best out of himself in various areas, from driving and iron play to chipping and course management, while also offering practical little nuggets of advice that could help you on the course.

Hitting it long and straight 

1. Hitting it straight is very, very important. The difference – particularly for us as professional golfers – in ball control from the fairway to even the semi-rough is quite big. You look at the best drivers like Rory McIlroy – he hits it very long and straight. He hits a lot of fairways and then he can dominate and attack courses from there. One thing that people are afraid of is teeing the ball higher and hitting up on the driver. Your irons you hit down on, your fairway woods are then neutral where your attack angle is around zero, and the driver is where you want to start hitting up. We have all the technology available to us these days to learn to trust teeing the ball up and getting the attack angle up. That’s how you go about adding length, and you can then work on straightening it out from there.