TOMMY FLEETWOOD once described himself and his wife Clare Craig as “pioneers” when asked about the couple’s 23-year age gap.
Tommy, 32, and his wife Clare, 55, met in 2015 when she approached him to be her agent.
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Clare is a well-known name in the world of sports agencies, with her initial specialty being motorsport.
But in 2015, his company Hambric Sports Management began expanding its golf roster and the two met in a professional setting.
Speaking in 2015, when Clare began representing him as his manager, Tommy said Monthly Golf: “I also get on well with Clare Craig, who is vice-president of Europe. She has always been present at the Tour and I have spoken to her a lot over the years.”
After Clare became Tommy’s manager, he said it only took a few months for the two to fall in love.
He said in a January interview with The times: “We spent more and more time together and it turned out that we fell in love.”
Regarding how long it took, he said: “Not long, just months. We already had a really strong connection and the extra time we spent together pushed us to the limit.”
But that didn’t happen without Clare rejecting Tommy’s first approaches.
Clare said she turned Tommy down the first few times, citing the age difference, she said: “We have a 23 year age difference. “
But after Tommy asked her out again, she said she “eventually gave in” and the two started dating.
Clare initially planned to give up her management role after the two began a relationship, but after waiting six months to see how her management would affect things, the two decided that she would continue to represent him.
Tommy told Performance People Podcast in May 2023: “As we were sitting there listening to different proposals, I thought I can do this… but for some reason at first I thought I couldn’t and shouldn’t.
“Then we gave it six months and it worked, so we continued.”
The two would get married in 2017 in the Bahamas and three months later they had their son, Franklin.
Speaking about the age gap, Fleetwood told The Times: “Oh, we definitely get comments. But that was never a thing for us. Clare actually looks very young for her age and I look old – it’s probably because of all that sun. She’s incredibly cool and I’m not cool at all, even though I’m pretty mature for my age.
When interviewer Julia Llewellyn Smith suggested that the eyebrows wouldn’t have raised as much if the sexes were reversed, Fleetwood said, “Exactly!”
When asked what most brings the two together, Fleetwood said: “We share a very northern sense of humor. We both come from working-class backgrounds – when you look at our parents, they raised us in similar ways, whether it was in terms of kindness or toughness or wanting to be the best we can be.”
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This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story
