Tommy Fleetwood embracing pressure of being Race to Dubai leader

Tommy Fleetwood is enjoying the "good pressure" of being the Race to Dubai leader with just three tournaments remaining this season.

Fleetwood managed a battling top-six finish in his final event of the 2012 season to retain his European Tour card, but he is at the other end of the scale this year and stands on the verge of becoming European No 1 for the first time.

The Englishman goes into this week's Turkish Airlines Open with a commanding lead of over 850,000 points ahead of Sergio Garcia, who is not playing again until the season-finale in Dubai, while Justin Rose's stunning win at the WGC-HSBC Champions propelled him to third in the standings.

Fleetwood is playing in all three of the final batch of Rolex Series events, which gives him even more of an advantage over Garcia and Rose, who is not in the field for next week's Nedbank Challenge, and he joked he was looking forward to a "boring" end to the campaign in Dubai.

Comparing the pressure on him as similar to that of playing in front of his home fans in The Open at Royal Birkdale, Fleetwood said: "It is pressure but it is good pressure. They are good things.

"I played years ago and was able to finish top 10 to keep my card; I would much rather be doing this than that, but they have all got pressure, but this year it's a completely different kind of pressure, and I'm enjoying it. Last week wasn't the ideal result (20th), but I didn't actually do any harm. I think I moved ahead again last week.

"But all you can do is play your golf and try and improve. It's massive, it's the Race to Dubai, isn't it. It's one of the biggest things you can achieve in your career effectively. The ultimate goal every week is to win, and I do want to win another tournament before the year is out, and there's only three left.

"I'm still sort of quite grounded, quite focused on what I'm doing and trying to improve each week," added Fleetwood, who insisted he was happy to see Rose chase down and overhaul Dustin Johnson in Shanghai despite the result giving him another rival in the Race to Dubai.

"In terms of really wanting to win The Race to Dubai or get close, it wasn't ideal, but I was really, really happy for Justin to win it," he said. "I was genuinely happy for him. I like him. He's one of the people that's been nice to me, in particular this year, when I started playing them events a bit more, just hanging around with him and playing with him a bit more.

"He's been great, so I was really happy for him. And I mean, I still am further in front from The Race to Dubai. Just means that he's now a win away from overtaking me or catching me. But I'm a win away from putting it pretty much out of reach. So you can look at it both ways.

"You know, it's hard not to look at what they are doing but if I just concentrate on my stuff, i's really important now in the situation that I'm in, every shot is going to count. You never know what that end game is going to be. You don't know what might make the difference.

"So it's shot by shot or hole-by-hole, which is the obvious stuff. But he is one way away and I'm one win away of going further ahead, so both ways."

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