Tommy Fleetwood said Fred Couples inspired him to make a change to his game that allowed him to win for the first time on the PGA Tour.
Tommy Fleetwood won the Tour Championship, taking his first PGA Tour win and becoming the 2025 FedEx Cup champion. The sporting world came together to celebrate the victory, with the likes of LeBron James and Tiger Woods sending their congratulations.
He’s been close on multiple occasions this season. He lost the Travelers Championship to Keegan Bradley on the 18th hole, and Justin Rose won the St. Jude Championship despite Fleetwood leading for much of Sunday.
He had the most second-place and top 10 finishes without a win in PGA Tour history. That’s a testament to his form not just in 2025, but in the past few years. And it was 1992 Masters winner Fred Couples who told Fleetwood something that changed his game forever.
Fred Couples told Tommy Fleetwood to put the mini driver in his bag
Fleetwood’s game is built around precision. Whether that means off the tee box, on the fairway or on the green, he has an elite ability to place the ball exactly where he wants it, and how he wants it.
He excels on courses that require a controlled strike off the tee box. That’s partly because of the club he made famous, the mini driver. Smaller than a driver but bigger than a 3-wood, Fleetwood’s mini driver allows him to get distance off the tee with precision.
Fleetwood isn’t a hard hitter like Bryson DeChambeau or Rory McIlroy, so the mini driver is the ultimate weapon for him to beat the distance players with accuracy. And the Englishman said it was Couples who told him to put the club in his bag.
Speaking on the Fore Play Podcast, he said, “I was at the Masters in 2023. Fred Couples is on the range with this burner mini-driver. He comes over to me and he’s talking about this club. He says, ‘Have you seen this club? I’m going to hit it everywhere.’ I’m looking at it like, ‘Yeah, it does look nice.
“I got one at Hilton the following week and I hit it everywhere. I was like, ‘This club is unbelievable.’ So I’ve had one since then. Literally that day. I have to give Fred Couples some credit because he was probably the first one that used it and I was number two.
“I think because I was playing on tour I’m the one that people saw with it, and it became really popular since then.”
Tommy Fleetwood explains why he thinks the 3-wood is ‘disgusting’
Fleetwood went back to his old shaft on his mini driver at the Travelers, where he almost took his first win. He’s now using the Fujikura Ventus TR Blue 6-X shaft that he first started using the club with.
Since first adding the club to his bag two years ago, Fleetwood has stayed loyal to it, and has become the best mini driver on Tour. He said he won’t go back to using a 3-wood, which he can no longer hit.
He said, “I never had a 3-wood that I loved. I always tried to find a 3-wood that was really hot, went like a rocket. If I’m on a par five that’s really long I can feel like I can get my 3-wood there. I never really hit one off the tee so it wasn’t like I was going to miss having a 3-wood in.
“So I put this mini driver in and started hitting it off the tee loads. I can still hit it off the deck, and I actually looked at a 3-wood this year… I put this thing down and I was like, ‘That’s disgusting. I can’t get this off the ground this is awful.’
“I hit like two shots with it that were dreadful and I was like, ‘I’m probably stuck with a mini driver for life now.”
If it’s not broke, don’t fix it! Fleetwood’s mini driver helped him to the win at the Tour Championship, and Luke Donald’s European team will hope that it’s working well for him at the upcoming Ryder Cup.