Why Rickie Fowler may not be done winning in 2023
Four years is a heck of a long time in sports, particularly in an individual one like golf.
That made Rickie Fowler’s winless drought, a stretch that lasted from Super Bowl Sunday 2019 to Sunday at the Rocket Mortgage Classic, all the more agonizing to watch. Fowler has long been one of the most popular and beloved players in golf, with multiple close calls in major championships and a Ryder Cup pedigree indicating that there was more to the Oklahoma State product than his orange outfits.
But 2023 has been, well, different for the 34-year-old. With a new caddie by his side in Ricky Romano, and Butch Harmon (who coached Fowler from 2014 to 2019) back in his corner, Fowler has seen upticks in every facet of his game.
Those upticks have resulted in the Californian getting back to an elite level, as Fowler is now sixth in the world according to Data Golf — which ranks players based on their performance relative to the average PGA Tour field.
Given that context, Fowler’s victory in Detroit on Sunday is not surprising in the slightest. Prior to the Rocket Mortgage, he had logged seven top-10s dating to September, and shared the lead heading into the final round at last month’s U.S. Open.
Fowler shared the sentiment, as he told CBS Sports' Amanda Renner after his playoff win over Collin Morikawa and Adam Hadwin that he “knew it was just a matter of time with how I’d been playing.”
But that does not mean the win was not extremely satisfying to watch. Fowler lost his game, fell to nearly 200th in the Official World Golf Ranking, then dug it out of the dirt and finally notched his sixth career win. That takes a whole lot of dedication to your craft.
Now, the attention turns to what is next. In his prime, Fowler was a consistent contender in the four most important events of the year, with one of his best chances coming at the 2014 Open Championship at Royal Liverpool.
That week, he finished joint second at 15-under, just two shots back of Rory McIlroy. In another example of just how quickly time flies, the oldest tournament in golf returns to Liverpool later this month, and Fowler will be on the short list of pre-tournament favorites.
The Open will conclude the 2023 major championship season, but there will still be meaningful golf to be played this year. For starters, there’s the FedexCup Playoffs, with a whopping $75 million in bonus cash available at the season-ending Tour Championship in Atlanta.
The winner of the Tour Championship receives $17 million, and while Fowler — with over $48 million in career earnings on the PGA Tour — is certainly not in dire need of money, playing for such a large sum brings pressure.
With the American currently eighth in the FedEx Cup standings, and trending in the right direction, maintaining his hot stretch as the summer winds down could result in a considerable deposit to his bank account.
Then there is the Ryder Cup. Fowler, a mainstay on Team USA (in Ryder and Presidents Cups) from 2010 until 2019, is now 12th in the standings. While he is unlikely to jump into the top six — the threshold needed to automatically qualify — given his run of form and his natural fit into the team room, Fowler is almost assured of a pick from captain Zach Johnson.
Who knows? Maybe the Rocket Mortgage victory was just the start and Fowler is destined for another high finish at the Open, a march through the Tour Championship and a starring role in the first American win in a road Ryder Cup since 1993.
Yet Fowler, based on his post-round comments Sunday, appears to have other priorities. As he held his 19-month-old daughter Maya, he told Renner that “winning’s great, but there’s a lot more to life than that.”
Quite the attitude to have.
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