TRAVELERS CHAMPIONSHIP

June 24, 2026

Tommy Fleetwood

TPC River Highlands

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: We would like to welcome Tommy Fleetwood to the interview room here at the Travelers Championship. Coming off of three consecutive top-15 finishes, including T-11 last week at the U.S. Open. Tommy a really good stretch of golf. If we can talk a little bit about the state of your game coming into the week.

TOMMY FLEETWOOD: Yeah, I've been playing nice. I've been playing a lot of good stuff. I think yeah Memorial was great. I think you look at those three events, Memorial I was jointly defender with three holes to play. I think Canada I birdied the first on Sunday to go in second place. And then last week at the U.S. Open I think I was in second place with 14 holes to go or something like that. So not finished the way I would want to, but I think there's been a lot of good golf in there and to find yourself in contention in those events with not that long left to go in a tournament is obviously very positive and just want to continue to build on that.

THE MODERATOR: You're back at the Travelers, you have three top-15 finishes at this event. I know last year is one you're going to remember for a long time. Kudos for the classy way that you handed that. If you can take us back to last year, what you learned from it and how you're ready to win this event this week.

TOMMY FLEETWOOD: Well I played great last year and I think it was the start of a really good stretch of golf for me. I missed the cut at the U.S. Open this time last year. I was still having a relatively solid season. Then all of a sudden it was nice to play some great golf and build some confidence from that. Yeah, I would have loved to have finished a different way, but fair play to key begin for the way he finished. It was a great Sunday being right up there in contention and leading the tournament for a lot of the week. I do feel like it was a springboard and it was the start of what was an amazingly strong finish to the season for me. So good memories here, it's a course that I like. I'm looking forward to playing again this week.

THE MODERATOR: This is a tournament that all of you guys really love. What is it about the Travelers Championship that's so nice?

TOMMY FLEETWOOD: Well the golf course, I think everybody really appreciates the challenge of the golf course, the fact that you can play well and shoot a really good score, bad holes and bad shots are right around the corner also. I think that is the good sign or a great sign of a very fair test. The fans, the atmosphere this tournament creates is one of the best of the year. In general, you're coming off the U.S. Open. Travelers, they do so much for the families here and making it such an experience for everyone. So I know a lot of times you can also judge a tournament on how much your family loves it as well, and they do such a great job here to make everybody feel comfortable and have a great time. So I think that's why everybody loves it.

THE MODERATOR: All right, we'll get started with questions.

Q. The fourth hole if you could just take me through how you play that hole starting with your approach shot and then in to the green and when you're having to deal with?

TOMMY FLEETWOOD: Strong hole, yeah. Yeah, I think the tee shot, it's one of the hardest fairways to hit on the golf course. Obviously if you've hit the fairway then you're hitting into quite a narrow stretch of green. I feel like there's that fall off to the right. Depending upon the pin position you're okay there, but it's actually a hole that just demands two really good shots. Hopefully you're in the right section because the green can get away from you if you're above the hole. So one of the holes out here -- like you have every opportunity to make a 3, of course you do. But coming off with a 4 on the 4th is always a good thing.

Q. The finish last year, how can that make you a stronger player mentally?

TOMMY FLEETWOOD: Well, yeah, as disappointed and gutted as I was I felt like I got a lot of support from it. I've seen Rory talk about it before, like you go through those upsets and you wait for the next day and you realize maybe it's not as bad as you think and you have to get back to work no matter what. I think when you've lost tournaments or given them away, but then you've won tournaments I probably won the odd one that maybe I shouldn't have. But you realize that the next day everybody gets up and goes to work anyway and you got to carry on. So I think if you use them as fuel in the right way to take the positives from the overall week and you use the other things as motivation to get better and put yourself there again and want to go put it right I think they should only work in your favor and only have a positive impact on what happens next. I say I always look back on this time last year as it was probably one of the hardest ones to take because it really was in my hands at that point, but there was so much good stuff and I do feel like it helped me going forward.

Q. Can you talk about perhaps switching from U.S. Open survival mode to perhaps the aggressive play needed to do well here?

TOMMY FLEETWOOD: Yeah, I always think coming off the back of a major I think you put so much into the majors in terms of like refining your skills as sharply as possible to be able to handle a major championship, a U.S. Open at that. So then whatever comes next, there's a lot of like recovery involved, but also I feel like your game hopefully, especially if you played well in a major you felt like you were in a good place, your game is in a really good spot to go and express yourself on a course that maybe isn't as punishing at times in terms of, you know, runoffs into greens and how accurate you have to be on your approach shot. So I think the week after majors is always quite a nice week if you feel like you're playing quite well that you can sort of go into it with having to do less practice and then go out and play. And, yeah, look, pretty much any golf course is going to offer up more birdie opportunities than Shinnecock Hills does. So you do have that to look forward to. But at the same time this course offers so many challenges. You still have to be right on it. It's always nice to feel like you're going to have opportunities, you're not going to be holding on and par is always a good score at a U.S. Open, of course it is, and par is never going to do you any harm pretty much anywhere. But it's nice to feel that you're going to have an opportunity to have a go at the golf course at least.

Q. Did you have a chance to check out the changes that are going to be rolled out in 2028?

TOMMY FLEETWOOD: Kind of. Ish.

Q. Generally it looks like it's going to be 23 to 24 big-time events in roughly a seven month period from February to August. Generally, do you have any concern that it's a lot of high-level championship golf in a pretty condensed period of time?

TOMMY FLEETWOOD: Yeah, I think over the last few years the schedule has been getting more and more condensed. One of the great things about it is you have a pretty much all the best players or the majority of the best players playing all at the same time. So that's obviously a great thing from a fan perspective and playing perspective, you get to play against each other all the time. Yeah, of course it comes with its challenges and I think for all of us we, you know, you continue to learn at how your game goes throughout the year, how your body reacts. I think you get to this time of year and I think over the last couple of years you can definitely see it's easy to start feeling tired. I think niggles start to happen in the body and stuff like that. I think mentally it can have its strains. But we're having opportunity to learn from that and then put that into the following season as well. So I think, yeah, seeing how the schedule continues to evolve, how much golf we'll play in that period of time, and then looking at how we can best manage that. I think it's really, really important, but like I say, it does have its benefits. I think for us as European golfers we've had the opportunity the last few years to play over in Europe from that period of September through to November, December. I think that's great for us. So that's worked really, really well. But, yeah, like for sure there's a lot of golf, a lot of intensity, and you just have to keep learning how to manage that as best as possible.

Q. With your international travel, what's your target number of tournaments you like to play a year?

TOMMY FLEETWOOD: I think as in overall? I think last few years I've maybe played like 27, 28. So I would say that's probably like max number. I'm not going to sit and complain about playing too much golf. I mean, it's like a dream for everyone, right, to play golf as a job, so playing a couple too many tournaments isn't really a problem. But, yeah, I think you have your ideal number and then you try and work around that and hopefully that's the thing, you know, that's an ideal number, that means you made it all the way through the playoffs, it means you played a Ryder Cup and in a Ryder Cup year. So on those ideas, the more golf you play is better in a way.

Q. Following up on that I was curious your thoughts on the new model in terms of the Championship Series and the Challenger Series and how those two are going to interact?

TOMMY FLEETWOOD: Yeah, it will be interesting. I haven't looked loads into it and I've seen the general gist of the schedule and how that will work in those two series. I think you have two very competitive models. I think you got the best players in the world playing against each other with week in week out and then you have a very competitive model in terms of trying to earn that promotion from that Challenger Series. So I don't know, as most people, I don't know which tournaments fit in where exactly, but, yeah, I think it will be -- I think it will be cool. I think just that competitive aspect and the ability to -- I think the great thing is always is that I always say wherever you sit in the game or whoever you're playing, if you play how you want to play, you will end up where you want to be. I think having the chance to, you know, if you're not one of the guys that are playing in the Championship Series, then having the opportunity with great golf to be able to work your way up, I think it's important and I think that's probably the most important aspect of it all, really.

Q. What's the mindset that you come here with? Is it one of confidence because you played so well most of this tournament last year? Is it one of redemption where you just want to go out and prove something to yourself, to this course, to the fans here?

TOMMY FLEETWOOD: No, I think I'm very focused on where I'm at this year. We all have our individual goals that we're looking at on any given time. Whether it be weekly, monthly or throughout the year. So I'm very focused at sort of where I sit now in terms of World Ranking, FedExCup, where my game is at. Just focusing on that, really. I think when the tournament comes and when I'm playing the course, it's always good to come somewhere where you can draw on good shots that you've hit, so there's that. I'll probably have some of that in the back of my mind. But, yeah, whether I won by 10 last year or I played terrible or whether I didn't win when I maybe should have won, you know, it was a year ago and very much like very much sort of moved on from that and I look at where I am now and we've just had the U.S. Open, this is a huge event that can have a massive impact on your year, and then we've got not very much time until we're moving into the Open Championship as well. So there's so much going on that I think it's just very important to be in the present and focus on sort of where my game is at now, what I need to do in order to compete best this week and get myself into contention and good from there.

Q. Where is your game right now? Are you pretty pleased with how you're playing?

TOMMY FLEETWOOD: Yeah, I've been playing pretty well, I've been playing solid. I'm not best pleased with how I finished the last couple of events. I don't think -- yeah, I don't think my last couple finishes have justified where I felt like my game was at in terms of being able to compete until the very end. So, I also understand golf is fickle and you have to keep chipping away. But in general I, we've been working really well, I've been playing very well, and always stay optimistic about big things being around the corner.

THE MODERATOR: Tommy, as always thank you for your time.

TOMMY FLEETWOOD: Thanks, guys.