England’s Tommy Fleetwood has returned to competition buoyed by the birth of his son in ending the season as European No. 1.

During his month-long absence Fleetwood’s fiancée and also manager, Clare Craig gave birth early last week to a son the couple named Franklin though his name has already been shortened to ‘Frankie’.

“She picked Frankie and I moved it to Franklin because I like that, so he will be called Frankie,” said Fleetwood.

“But she picked Frankie. When people started asking, my Mum and Dad said — I wanted to call you Frankie, and that was it. It was settled. It will be Frankie. I think he looks like a Frankie.”

Tommy Fleetwood with son Frankie. (Photo – Clare Craig)

Fleetwood, 28 has been top of the Race to Dubai ranking for the better part of the year in having captured the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship in January, finishing second in the WGC – Mexico Championship, fourth at the U.S. Open and then then adding a second title by sealing success in the French Open in June.

The mop-haired Fleetwood tees-up in this week’s Alfred Dunhill Links Championship in Scotland currently enjoying a near Euro 1m lead over Spain’s Sergio Garcia and with Garcia’s compatriot, Jon Rahm and favourite for the European Tour ‘Rookie of the Year’ award, trailing some Euro 40,000 behind the Masters winner.

“This particular part of this year, it’s a massively important time to sort of play well if you can, massive events,” Fleetwood said.

“We all kind of know what’s on the line and I would love to win The Race to Dubai, absolutely love it.

“I can’t get away from it. I can’t say, I won’t think about it and I’ll try and do — just go through my processes because that’s the goal now.

“The nice thing is we don’t really get an off-season these days, so that six, seven weeks, has kind of been that a little bit for me.  Sometimes it freshens you up as sometimes you come back really rusty.

“So, as I was saying before, these are big weeks coming up, and I might as well put the hours in and now looking forward to working hard and playing again and seeing how it goes”.