‘Never been a thing to us’: what the couple says
Twenty-three years apart, and he’s the younger one. In the world of elite golf, that still turns heads. But for Tommy Fleetwood and his wife, Clare, the number has never defined their relationship.
The English golfer, 34, has spoken about the age gap several times, most recently stressing that while people do make remarks, it isn’t something that shapes their day-to-day life. “Oh, we definitely get comments,” he told The Times of London. “But it’s never been a thing to us. Clare actually looks very young for her age and I look old — it’s probably all that sun. She’s incredibly cool and I’m not cool at all, though I am quite mature for my age.” Then he added the line that says a lot about how others see it: if the ages were reversed, “nobody would bat an eyelid.”
Clare, 57, has been just as open. On the Performance People podcast in 2023, she admitted she initially pushed back when Tommy first showed interest. “We’ve got a 23-year age difference. Of course, I turned him down. I was like, ‘Don’t be stupid.’” For her, the hesitation wasn’t about doubt in him; it was the soundtrack of other people’s opinions playing in the background. “People who were the doubters have redeemed themselves,” she said later, reflecting on how friends and colleagues eventually came around. The relationship wasn’t the issue; it was the noise.
The pair met in 2015, when Clare was his sports agent. That alone made some in golf circles whisper. Athlete and manager, a woman older than the player — it was a neat headline. What people didn’t see was the everyday partnership taking shape behind it: the travel, the training, the late-night calls after tough rounds, the tax of competing across continents. By mid-2017, they were engaged. A few months later, they married on a beach in the Bahamas. Tommy’s long-time caddie, Ian Finnis, stood alongside him as best man. Their son, Franklin, arrived in September 2017. Clare’s two older sons, Oscar and Mo, became part of the picture too, and Tommy stepped into a new role as a stepfather.
Family moments have kept pace with career milestones. At Augusta, Franklin has turned the Masters Par 3 Contest into a family day out, the kind that shows the human side of a sport built on precision and pressure. In 2024, Tommy flipped roles to carry Oscar’s bag during a Challenge Tour event. He called it “one of the highlights of my career,” which says something about what still matters most to him when the cameras aren’t around.
There’s also the context that puts their story in sharper focus. In the UK, the average age difference for married couples tends to be two to three years, with men more often the older partner. Flip that dynamic and the scrutiny kicks up. Tommy has been frank about that double standard. The couple’s response has been to keep putting one foot in front of the other — life, work, and family wrapped together on the road.
Life on tour, family at the centre
Home base today is Dubai, where their children attend school and where travel to tournaments is simpler. It’s a logistics hub as much as a lifestyle choice. Clare still manages Tommy’s career, and that dual role — partner and manager — is part of the reason the operation runs tight. She is regularly on-site at events, handling the quieter bits that fans don’t see: schedules, sponsor obligations, practice windows, recovery plans, flights and visas, the small decisions that pile up into a season.
Their dynamic formed in the trenches of a global sport. Golf is a grind — a schedule that stretches from the Middle East swing to the Florida stretch, then across to Europe and back again. Results are visible by Sunday evening; the work behind them, less so. That’s where Clare’s role has been steadying. It’s also where the relationship faced early industry chatter: Was it wise to mix business and romance? Would it distract from performance? Time, and a growing stack of results, offered the reply.
Consider the arc. Tommy’s career has been built on big stages and fine margins — runner-up finishes at majors, Ryder Cup steel, and a long wait for a first PGA Tour title. He’s been at his best when things have been at their most intense. He helped power Europe to a famous Ryder Cup win with Francesco Molinari in Paris in 2018. Five years later, he delivered the point that sealed Europe’s victory at Marco Simone in 2023. And on August 24, 2025, he finally put the PGA Tour drought to bed by winning the Tour Championship, the victory that had loomed for years. The result capped off a stretch of consistent play and underlined the resilience that’s marked his career.
Behind those headlines is a family that moves as one. Franklin at the ropes. Oscar chasing his own dream in the game, with Tommy happy to be the one lugging the bag for a change. Mo growing up in the slipstream of a tour life that can mean homework in airports and birthdays on the road. It’s not the picture most people think of when they hear “age gap.” It’s just a family figuring out rhythm.
Tommy and Clare talk about it in simple terms: do the work, shut out the noise, and keep a healthy sense of perspective. That attitude shows up in how he speaks about his wife. In interviews he often calls her “cool” and himself “not cool at all,” a line that lands part-honest, part-charm, and mostly as a nod to the balance she brings. His point about maturity — that he’s always felt older than the number suggests — isn’t a defense so much as a description.
If you zoom out from the relationship and into the sport, their setup makes practical sense. The business of golf rewards structure: smart scheduling, realistic goals, a plan for the weeks when the swing isn’t there. A partner who knows the calendar and the player well enough to adjust on the fly is an advantage. That’s not romance; that’s operations. And when the person in charge of operations is also the person you lean on most, it shortens the distance between what’s needed and what happens.
They’ve also learned to live with the conversation that follows them. Some of it is good-natured curiosity; some of it is the stale joke about who looks older. Tommy’s shrug — that he looks older because of “all that sun” — is a neat way to defuse it. The rest is judgment about norms: who should be older, who should manage whom, who should propose to whom, and when. Clare has said the doubts weren’t hers. They belonged to others, and most of those voices have faded as the years stacked up.
What hasn’t faded is the routine that keeps the show on the road. Early alarms. Flights that land close to midnight. Practice rounds on Tuesdays, pro-ams on Wednesdays, tee times that shuffle when the wind shifts. Families that travel like this get good at making unfamiliar places feel normal: a favorite breakfast spot by the course, a hotel room with space for putting drills on the carpet, a route to the gym that avoids traffic. Franklin’s school projects have probably seen more of the world than most adults.
Tommy’s easy rapport with fans — the handshakes, the photos, the smile after a rough day — tells its own story. Players who have their home life squared away tend to wear pressure differently. That doesn’t guarantee wins; it steadies the line. The Tour Championship breakthrough in 2025 mattered because of what it capped: years of near-misses, a lot of Sunday heat, and the refusal to sulk after close calls. It also mattered because of what came next — a reminder that the work never stops, that the next week demands the same attention as the last.
For those who want the quick timeline, here are the beats that shaped the couple’s path:
- 2015: They meet while Clare is managing Tommy’s career.
- Mid-2017: The couple gets engaged.
- Late 2017: Beach wedding in the Bahamas; Tommy’s caddie, Ian Finnis, is best man.
- September 2017: Their son, Franklin, is born.
- 2023: Clare says early doubters “redeemed themselves” as the relationship proves steady; Tommy clinches Europe’s Ryder Cup win at Marco Simone.
- 2024: Tommy caddies for stepson Oscar at a Challenge Tour event — a personal highlight.
- August 24, 2025: Tommy wins the Tour Championship, ending his PGA Tour victory drought.
Back at home in Dubai, life resets quickly. School runs. Training blocks. A calendar with sharp edges. The story people reach for — the age gap, the agent-turned-wife — ends up being the most boring part of their day. What feels truer is the quiet machinery of a modern golf life: a couple that shares both the personal and the professional, a team that knows what it is, and a family that keeps showing up together, week after week.
