Local hero Tommy Fleetwood treads familiar ground at Royal Birkdale

There were three ways to get to play Royal Birkdale back when Tommy Fleetwood was a kid growing up in Southport. One was to stump up hundreds in visitors’ green fees, another was to get invited as the guest of a friendly member, and the last was to be proposed, seconded and vetted and pay a few thousands in dues to become a member yourself. Or you could do what Fleetwood did and cut south along the beach from Southport, past the posh houses on the south side of town, then hop the fence that runs along the back of the 5th fairway.

“I did it once or twice,” Fleetwood said with a blush this week. “It wasn’t like every day.”

Fleetwood learned golf at Southport Municipal, three miles up the road from Birkdale, and, when he turned out to be good at it, got a membership at Formby Hall, which is three miles down from it. “Royal Birkdale was always kind of hallowed turf for people that lived in Southport, and I definitely didn’t get to play here as much as I would like to.” His dad worked in construction, his mum was a hairdresser. Most of his memories of the place are from when he was a patron. He was here chasing autographs in 1998, the year Mark O’Meara won the Open. He says now that the best one he got was Colin Montgomerie’s.

It was that day out which first made him want to be a professional golfer.

Twenty-eight years later, Fleetwood is right up among the favourites to win here this week. He started with an opening-round 69, one under par, with two bogeys and three birdies. He described it as a “battle” afterwards. “It wasn’t that easy out there. There’s not really loads of birdie opportunities. One under is a good start to the week.” It was a whole lot better than the six-over he scored in the first round the last time the Open was at Birkdale, when his chances of winning the thing were good as done by the time he reached the 18th.

There wouldn’t be a more popular major winner if Fleetwood does get it done. He is renowned for being one of the nicest guys in golf, there’s goodwill towards him everywhere he goes, but it’s something else here in the north-west. Fleetwood went to school at nearby Scarisbrick Hall. He has set up a kids’ academy at Formby Hall, which is still his home club all these years later, run by the same coach who taught him when he was six. It costs £75 for six weeks’ tuition, and is meant for the kids like him, whose families can’t afford the hundreds it costs to play at Birkdale.

You can still see the spot where he used to sneak on to the front nine. The 5th is different this year, they’ve cut 25 yards off it, but that gap is still there, right by the tee. They’ve put up a few temporary metal fences to stop people sneaking on during the Open. By the time Fleetwood made it to the tee, around half past 11 on Thursday, a little crowd of in-the-know locals had gathered there underneath the trees to watch him for free through the chain links. Fleetwood whistled his tee shot up above them – “Go on Tommy lad!” – over the trees and along towards the green.

Everyone seems to call him “Tommy Lad” around here. “Honestly, the support today was a massive lift for me, especially like around that turn where I scrambled really well,” he said. “I felt like the crowd really helped me. They definitely sort of carried me a little bit through.”

He was out with Jon Rahm, also one under after 18, and Jordan Spieth. They’re a popular trio, and pulled a lot of people. Spieth needed it even more than Fleetwood did. He was way back behind the two of them. Spieth won the last time the Open was here at Royal Birkdale back in 2017, at the end of a stretch when he won three out of eleven majors. He returns here as far away from finally winning his fourth as he ever was. He’s said himself that the odd thing is that holes on which he did the work that won him that championship have all been redesigned since, so that the tee shot he hit to score a hole in one at the 14th on Sunday that year isn’t here any more.