{"id":379693,"date":"2025-08-28T06:59:24","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T06:59:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/379693\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T06:59:24","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T06:59:24","slug":"tommy-fleetwood-proves-nice-guys-dont-always-finish-last","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/379693\/","title":{"rendered":"Tommy Fleetwood proves nice guys don’t always finish last"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tommy Fleetwood\u2019s success, and his response to it, contains an important message to all of us <\/p>\n

It was a baseball star who, more than 70 years ago, first said: \u201cNice guys finish last.\u201d Ever since, it has been commonly used as a mantra in sport, business, and indeed politics: to be successful, you need an edge, a single-minded determination, a ruthlessness, a selfishness, a willingness to get nasty.<\/p>\n

This simple axiom has, through time, even been used as the title of a hit song, a movie, and several self-help books. The world is an unforgiving place, and nice guys just don\u2019t come out on top.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

So when the British golfer Tommy Fleetwood<\/a>, chasing his first tournament victory in the US after 11 years of trying and a succession of gut-wrenching near misses, put his ball in the water at a crucial moment over the weekend, everyone watching believed they had seen this truism made flesh.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fleetwood is open, approachable, even-tempered, and popular with fans. He is, from all that we know, a \u201cnice guy\u201d. His reaction to his ball finding a watery grave was not to smash his club on the ground, to unleash a volley of oaths, or to blame his caddy. He maintained his equanimity and continued to engage in a friendly manner\u00a0with spectators lining the course. At that point, we knew he wouldn\u2019t win. He\u2019s just too nice.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

What transpired was a morality tale, and you don\u2019t need to have any interest in golf<\/a> to find it inspiring. Twenty-four hours later, Fleetwood was hugging his tearful adult stepson Oscar on the final green after finally securing the tournament victory he\u2019d chased for so long. He proved us all wrong.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Golf is a cruel sport in the way it exposes an individual\u2019s mental resilience. Of course, it\u2019s no big deal to hit a stationary ball towards a target. No one is trying to tackle you, and you\u2019ve had years of coaching. Self-doubt becomes your opponent. And this is where Fleetwood provides an example to us all, and particularly to those who may be struggling with their own inner demons.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One\u2019s name is one\u2019s destiny, and Tommy Fleetwood\u2019s evokes old-fashioned virtues, of the age of music hall and of days by the English seaside (he was born in Southport, funnily enough). So there was something cheeringly frank and artless about his 20-minute winner\u2019s press conference, which was more instructive and edifying than any self-help book.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s easy for anybody to say that they are resilient, that they bounce back, that they have fight,\u201d he said, \u201cbut it\u2019s different when you have to show it. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had to be resilient in terms of putting myself back up there, getting myself back in that position, no matter how many times it doesn\u2019t go my way, no matter how many doubts might creep in. Think the right things, say the right things to yourself, say the right things outwardly.\u201d<\/p>\n

This treatise on perseverance and redemption is not unusual to hear in the aftermath of sporting triumph, but what made Fleetwood\u2019s reaction so striking \u2013 and moving \u2013 was his humility and his perspective. \u201cWhatever would have happened today,\u201d he said, \u201cwe\u2019d have gone home\u2026 and my life would still be great. That\u2019s something I would never take for granted.\u201d It\u2019s also something you rarely hear from a sporting champion.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I could give my kids one piece of advice,\u201d he continued, \u201cit would be to be a good person first. My dad always told me that. Person first, golfer second. I\u2019ve always tried to be that.\u201d <\/p>\n

No matter that, until this weekend, many people saw his career as marked by failure. Fleetwood framed many of his comments by saying how lucky he was to be in his position.\u00a0Contrast that with successful people in business and sport, who believe their achievements are solely as a result of their own brilliance rather than good fortune.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fleetwood certainly comes across as a kindly soul, who could be a different style of role model, a personification of Kipling\u2019s advice to treat triumph and disaster as twinned imposters. I understand that golf has something of an aura of elitism, but Tommy Fleetwood\u2019s success, and his response to it, contains an important message to all of us. Nice guys do not always finish last.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tommy Fleetwood\u2019s success, and his response to it, contains an important message to all of us It was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4106],"tags":[2826,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-379693","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115105101757966266","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}