Barely 20 minutes after he’d holed a brilliant birdie putt on the 18th at The Renaissance to force a play-off, Tommy Fleetwood missed a tiddler on the same green at the first extra hole to hand victory in the Aberdeen Standard Investments Scottish Open to Aaron Rai.
The 25-year-old from Wolverhampton did heroically to twice scramble pars at the 18th from the same fairway bunker after his brilliant closing 64 saw him finish with an 11-under aggregate of 273, but Fleetwood’s shocking miss of a three-footer proved a stunningly abrupt end to the $7 million championship.
The popular Ryder Cup hero’s name seemed to be on the trophy when he drained a 15 footer at the last to force extra-time, but his putting had been at best erratic all day and he’d missed a ton of chances to make it a canter to victory in the autumnal sunshine of East Lothian.
He’d even pulled a simple three-footer for birdie at the long 16th before finally making a long one at 18. Then, seemingly holding all the cards in the middle of the fairway in the play-off hole while Rai drove into the sand, he was short with his second and took three more to get down.
The young Englishman, who had been runner-up last week in the Irish Open, was 30 yards short of the green in two but putted up to three and a half feet and made it just before Fleetwood’s shocking miss.
It’s actually Rai’s second win in Scotland, but the first was a modest EuroPro Tour event at Mar Hall in Renfrewshire when the first prize was £10,000. This time his share of the pot is nearly £1 million and a leap to fifth in the Race to Dubai.
“I remember everything about that win, I also won a trolley and a rangefinder,” he said. “I definitely wouldn;t be standing here if hadn’t won that tournament , it was incredibly important in my career.
“I feel quite fortunate, not just because of what happened to Tommy, I certainly didn’t expect him to miss that putt, it was not a good way for it to end. Where the pin was on 18 made it easier for me to get up in range from the bunker and get up and down both times. You have to have that bit of good fortune.”
The riches and leaping into the world’s top 100 as a result of this is less important to him than the experience he’s gained over the last two weeks.
“I think what I’ve learned falling just short in Ireland last week and winning this week is going to have more value than anything else moving forward,” he said. “Lockdown was such a terrible thing for the world at large but I think it was good for me when it happened, it allowed me to reset and work on getting stronger for things I needed to compete.”
With conditions so much improved from Saturday’s storm that it felt like a different venue, season, even country, there were a number of charges through the field but Rai’s seemed the most decisive.
Australia’s halfway leader Lucas Herbert went from 65 on Friday to 79 on Saturday and all the way back to 65 on Sunday, but he finished two shots outside the play-off in a share of fourth with Scotland’s Marc Warren, who was in the mix briefly.
The Scot had been playing with Rai, who went on a mid-round tear of eight birdies, the last at 16 from a bunker after Warren had pulled level with eagle. Rai made a fine par save from a fairway bunker on 18 at finish on 11-under as Warren bogeyed.
Behind them, Ian Poulter’s bid fell with just one shot – a drive on to the cliff and out of bounds at the 14th. Fleetwood seemingly couldn’t buy a putt while Robert Rock, who began the day with a two-shot lead left his final move late, but a bogey at the last dropped him out of the play-off.
Fleetwood missed a short putt for birdie at the 16th which seemed like leaving him a shot light, but for the second day in succession he made a birdie putt on the last green.
After the play-off, he was typically philosophical.
“I just fell short really, it’s been a good week,” he said. “I felt like I played really well today, especially on that back-nine.
“But my putting really cost me this week. That last one summed it up really. It was just a straight pull. You always try to look at the positives but I cocked it up on the first play-off hole.
“I didn’t miss a shot from maybe the eighth onwards. I had a bunch of chances. I’ll sulk for about five hours on the way home, then I’ll get ready for next week. Clearly my game is coming back – for a lot of this week I felt more like the player I should be.”
