IN BED WITH THE RYDER CUP: TOMMY AND FRANKIE’S ULTIMATE ‘MOLIWOOD’ ENDING
FLEETWOOD: How good was that for you? MOLINARI: Four out of four! FLEETWOOD: I’d give you five out of five, Frankie.
The Ryder Cup ‘Moliwood’ partnership that sank America and sparked raucous celebrations was cemented in the more sedate setting of a holiday in the Bahamas. Tommy Fleetwood and Francesco Molinari had such a strong pre-existing bond that they first began discussing it when they shared an island break in August. Soaking up the sun together, neither could have imagined the ramifications of their double act. The legacies of their 4-0 pairing have already included Molinari making history with a personal clean sweep, Fleetwood being carried on the shoulders of adoring crowds and yesterday’s hilarious social media posting of the two men tucked up in bed together, either side of the trophy. All these things, it turns out, are no accident, especially as Fleetwood’s wife, Clare, used to manage the Italian. ‘We spend quite a lot of time together anyway. Clare and Valentina (Molinari’s wife) are very close,’ said Fleetwood when he emerged after a night of festivities. ‘They speak a lot, me and Fran play a lot of practice rounds. We were actually on holiday in the Bahamas together, a week after the PGA Championship, when we started talking about the Ryder Cup. ‘You know who you get on with and I was never going to go with another rookie. ‘And we were more than likely going to play the first day, and then it was down to us to play well together. Moliwood is quite catchy — it has worked out well. ‘Thomas (Bjorn) is always in contact with everyone anyway, he has been for two years. We were pretty much nailed on — you need to tell Thomas your thoughts and we wanted to play together. We knew it before the holiday, so it was a good time to start talking about it.’ And Clare has no issue with their apparent bromance. ‘Any jealousy? No. I promote it,’ she joked as the team recuperated in their luxury Versailles hotel yesterday morning. Another legacy of the weekend is that her husband, distinctive-looking already, will become far more recognisable after the latest stage of this journey to prominence after initial struggles on the european Tour. ‘It is good with me,’ said Fleetwood. ‘I must’ve been doing something right. Believe me, it is way better than when you are working your b ****** s off and nobody knows who you are or wants to talk to you. It is the much better scenario. The Ryder Cup changes people’s careers — sometimes good, sometimes bad. Sometimes people don’t get it back after playing a Ryder Cup. ‘We’ll see. We have been in a bubble for a week now so when we finally get out of it, we will see what it is really like. I will be fine — I am sure I will be ready.’ Fleetwood is still getting over being submerged and then raised up by fans in the moment of victory, by which time he was a spectator himself. ‘The fans were amazing, weren’t they?’ he said. ‘It was nice to be done playing and give back a bit I guess. There isn’t normally 50,000 people egging me on. Maybe it just takes that to get me going. I’ve never won a Ryder Cup with team-mates and a crowd behind you, I was having a good time!’ his connection with the hordes, and brilliant start in this event, inevitably invites comparisons with Ian Poulter, although he is cautious about that himself. ‘When you are part of a Ryder Cup, you can see why people like Poults lives and breathes it, and how badly he wanted to get back in that team. I’d love to have that kind of essence and record but I’m not sure I could quite live up to Ian Poulter. Yesterday was an example of that. I couldn’t really explain, it is more like adulation for him. Playing down that stretch against Dustin and getting that point, he has just got that way of doing it.’ Some of the American team visited the european team celebrations on Sunday. everyone let their hair — in Fleetwood’s case his flowing locks — down. ‘everyone was genuinely happy,’ he said. ‘Patrick (Reed), Dustin Johnson, Brooks (Koepka) came in. There are a lot of nice guys in that team. As competitive as it is on the golf course — Patrick might shush a bit and Thomas might get riled up — that’s just the Ryder Cup really. I had my share of antics on the course with the crowd, but it’s no disrespect to anyone and we know it when we get off the course.’ Fleetwood is planning another visit to Goodison Park to watch his team, everton, in action, but as a man of the people he is not seeking special treatment. ‘The last time I went they put me in a box but I would rather be with the fans and having the atmosphere. The Ryder Cup was the cl osest thing we get to being a rock star, or a footballer scoring a goal in a World Cup final — that is what it felt like, it was very, very cool.’