By Amy Tennery
FARMINGDALE, New York (Reuters) -Tommy Fleetwood knows a thing or two about revenge and expects a U.S. team bent on retaliation at Bethpage Black this week after he sealed the Ryder Cup win for Europe in Rome two years ago.
The Englishman came into the competition on a high after clinching his first PGA Tour win on the 164th attempt at the Tour Championship last month and is considered among the toughest European competitors on Long Island.
He expects the rowdy New York fans to dish out plenty of pain for the defending champions Europe in his fourth trip to the Ryder Cup.
“When you’ve lost one, yeah, of course you have a chip on your shoulder. You have that feeling of hurt,” said Fleetwood.
Fleetwood speaks from experience, having been on the receiving end of a 19-9 thrashing at the hands of the Americans in 2021 at Whistling Straits, a bitter defeat that nonetheless brought the team closer together.
“Watching those guys celebrate when you know you didn’t feel like you didn’t do yourselves justice, I think is one of the most motivating things you can have,” he told reporters on Wednesday.
“It came to Rome, and I guess it was a very new look of a team, and a home crowd, home advantage, and we took that.”
The Americans will hope to use that overwhelming home advantage to good effect, with no away team having won the biennial match play competition since the Europeans’ “Miracle at Medinah” in Illinois in 2012.
“Of course the American team will have similar sort of feelings,” said Fleetwood.
“They’ll have been hurt from last time, and they’ll come here and want to win and be at home and win in front of their home crowd. And that’s just as it should be.”
(Reporting by Amy Tennery in Farmingdale, New York; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
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