Golf: Major bet on Tommy Fleetwood to be Open champ

Jun 10 2008 by Our Correspondent, Liverpool Daily Post

A £500 bet for Tommy Fleetwood to win an Open championship by the year 2017 has been placed by two members at the Park Golf Club, based at the municipal links at Southport where the teenager hit his first golf balls as a young boy.

The odds are 66-1 and John Murray, vice captain of the Park, who has placed the bet with his friend at the Park, Ken Maleret says he has every confidence of winning.

“I think Tommy is one of the finest young golfers I have seen at his age,” says Murray. He has paid £450 of the bet, Maleret £50.

The bet has been placed with William Hill after they approached the bookmakers asking about putting a bet on Fleetwood.

Murray says: “We have known him since he was a little boy. We have watched him develop, coming here almost every day with his dad, playing the muni when he was a young boy. All here at the Park send him their best wishes for the future.”

Fleetwood retains his links with the Park and Sefton Juniors based there and last year broke the course record with a 65 in the Sefton Juniors Open.

The bet will be framed and put on the wall at the clubhouse. Murray says that if successful the payout will total £33,000. “And we will get a nice holiday.”