As the sun set August 10th, 2014, in Louisville, Kentucky, golf fans had to wonder how they got so lucky? On the final day of the PGA Championship at Valhalla, a course once conquered by golf's own version of Odin in Tiger Woods, a major championship was coming down to the 72nd hole. And in contention stood three warriors: Rory McIlroy, Phil Mickelson, and Rickie Fowler.
McIlroy would roar loudest on that day, his second straight major after he claimed an Open Championship earlier that summer. The 2014 PGA is McIlroy's most recent major win. Mickelson, like the weather, was entering the sunset of a Hall of Fame career, and would finish second. He does not have a better finish in a major since that day. As for Fowler, that day in Kentucky seemed like another step of what would be an outstanding career. Instead, he's become the player waiting to congratulate the winner with a hug. And now just a week out from the 2021 Masters, Fowler has neither an invitation to Augusta, nor any semblance of a world-class game.
That 2014 season, Fowler joined elite company. Like, elite elite. He reeled off four top-5 major finishes, a T5 at Augusta, T2 at both the US Open and Open Championship, and then the T3 at Valhalla. The only two players before Rickie that ever finished top-5 in all four majors during a single season were Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. It wasn't a question of if Fowler would finally break through and win one. It was a question of when. And we still don't know the answer.
What makes it even more maddening for the throngs of Fowler fans is what happened less than a year later. In May 2015, just weeks before The Players Championship, Sports Illustrated released an anonymous poll of Tour pros who claimed Fowler (along with Ian Poulter) was the most overrated player on Tour. Rickie promptly won at TPC Sawgrass, including throwing darts on the famed 17th green both in regulation and the three-hole playoff. He had won golf's "fifth" major, and seemed primed to win one of the real four.
Since that May 2015 win at The Players, Fowler has won three times: once in 2015, once in 2017, and once in 2019. None have been majors. He has only three top-5 major finishes since that moment. And while a win at the Phoenix Open in 2019 probably feels like a major win for Fowler, it's not. Just as sure as I was back in 2014 that an eventual major win was coming, I'm equally unsure Fowler will ever conquer one of golf's biggest weekends.
The stats are alarming. Currently Rickie Fowler is 78th on Tour in strokes gained off the tee. That's not great, but it could be a lot worse. He's never been a bomber, but Fowler, like most players you watch on TV, was always lethal from the fairway with a short iron in his hand. And, most importantly, he was lethal with the putter. Putting was the one area of Fowler's game he could always fall back on, if necessary. His feet barely apart, standing mostly upright, his quiet stroke left loud results. Now all it leaves is large numbers.
I've triple-checked this, because it seems impossible, yet it's true. Rickie Fowler is currently 176th on the PGA Tour in strokes gained putting. Vincent Whaley is better than that. Bronson Burgoon is better than that. J.J. Spaun is better than that. Without google, I do not who any of those three people are, and I watch far too much golf as it is. No one statistic is the reason for a complete breakdown in skill. But the flat-stick is a good place to start.
In 2014, the year Fowler joined Woods and Nicklaus with the top-5 major finishes, Rickie was 50th in strokes gained off the tee and 37th in strokes gained putting. He finished in the top-20 of 12 events that year, and had a string of six straight weeks with top-15 finishes. In 2017, a year Fowler scored 15 top-20 finishes and three top-11 finishes in majors, Rickie led the PGA Tour in the same category. For anyone who has ever played golf, you know how hard it is to produce consistent results. But for someone who as recently as 2019 was 13th on Tour in strokes gained putting, 176th in the same category seems like someone accidentally hit "7" and "6" at the same time on the keyboard and just left it there.
What makes Fowler's decline even more peculiar is how last season started for him. The first three tournaments he played at the start of the 2019-2020 season, Fowler finished no worse than 10th, albeit in some smaller fields (Hero World Challenge, Sentry Tournament of Champions). He was a member of the winning Presidents Cup team. The restart after COVID appears to have severely hampered Fowler's game. In the eight appearances he made after golf resumed last summer, Fowler missed four cuts. And this year, he doesn't have a finish higher than 20th.
There's lessons to be learned everywhere for Fowler. That 2014 season, as magical a season can be without actually winning a major, started rather poorly. Fowler missed three straight cuts early in the year, and whether that was coincidence or working on an aspect of his game, it should serve as a reminder that it can be figured out in a short period of time.
The other lesson may be that of Fowler's close friend, Jordan Spieth. Spieth underwent his own fall from the leaderboard's grace, and has just recently emerged on the other side (although he's yet to win a tournament since the 2017 Open Championship). Spieth went through swing changes and bad results, just like Fowler is going through. Just as recently as a few weeks ago, it was Spieth explaining the changes Rickie is trying to make take a lot of time. He also said that if Fowler continues down the path he's on, eventually he will be successful. And while time will tell if that's true, Jordan Spieth has never struck me as someone to just say something cause he feels like it. If he says it, I'll bet he believes it.
The noise around Fowler will go nowhere until his game reappears. Sir Nick Faldo made sure of that when he tweeted about Fowler's availability to shoot commercials during Masters week if he were not playing. And while the two have a personal relationship, and Faldo has said he meant nothing disrespectful by the comments, Rickie Fowler is in a lot of commercials. If he's appearing there, but not appearing on Sundays, you can bet someone will have something to say about it.
There's no guarantee Fowler ever finds it again, as depressing as that may be if you like him, like I do. Johnny Miller, a player with a far better resume than Fowler, won two majors and finished second in The Masters twice before 1976, when Miller admits the "yips" affected his putting. He eventually found some form, but he was never the same player. And that was a two-time major champion.
Maybe Fowler shocks the world and wins this week's Valero Texas Open, which would automatically qualify him for next week's Masters. More likely, he'll hover around the cut line on Friday, and finish way off the lead. Maybe that's what he needs. Maybe watching The Masters (or not watching it) will help in his recovery, allowing him to take a step back, find something that works, and get after it.
If in August of 2014, you'd have offered me to 2-to-1 odds that Rickie Fowler would win a major in the next five years, I'd have given you every penny to my name and felt good about it. That's golf. One day you have it, and the next you don't. I'm guessing at some point, Rickie Fowler wins again. Maybe it's a major, maybe it's not. But it would be nice to see Fowler on the receiving end of a hug he has given just one too many times.