SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — If you wanted to encapsulate the Rickie Fowler experience, or what’s become of it over the past four years, you could do a whole lot worse than the 14th tee box Saturday afternoon.
For the fans adorning the hill abutting Scottsdale Road, Fowler’s driver head meeting golf ball served as a starting gun. These might be the farthest recesses of TPC Scottsdale, but where Fowler goes, the party follows. So as his ball soared through the air, the hollers rose. “Let ‘em hang, Rickie,” yelled one fan. The more common refrain was a three-word rhyme not fit for print. It starts with Big and ends with Rick, if that helps.
On the PGA Tour, this is rarified air. Golfers seldom have cult followings. The Thunderbirds could let 120 or so of this week’s 134 participants stroll the grounds Sunday and it wouldn’t earn much more than a sideways murmur from the biggest golf die-hards.
Rickie? Rickie is one of the others.
The Thunderbirds — the Phoenix Open’s organizers — were among the first to recognize as much. Back in 2009, when Fowler was still an amateur at Oklahoma State, they invited him to the tournament as an exempt entry. That was, in part, because they could see his unique talent. It was also because they could see his unique appeal.
Rickie Fowler makes his way to the 12th tee during the third round of the 2023 WM Phoenix Open at TPC Scottsdale. (Photo: Allan Henry-USA TODAY Sports)
That all congealed in 2014. On the course, Fowler finished in the top five of all four majors. He became golf’s next superstar, and had the swagger to match. His trademark Sunday look made orange a golf color and Puma an outfitting choice at munis across the country.
All of which brings us back to Saturday, at the 14th hole. For those fans, the Fowler of 2014 lives on.
The thin green ropes of a golf course, though, have a funny way of separating vision from reality. So it was on 14. As fans serenaded Fowler, the man himself buckled to one knee, begging a wayward ball to find its way back to the fairway. So it was on 15, too, where the fans erupted as he leaned to his left watching his drive sail into the desert brush. No matter, the crowd rose again when Fowler went for that par five’s green in two, taking aim at the middle clearing of a V-shaped tree. Again, the actual results betrayed them. Fowler’s ball found water.
This is the Rickie Fowler experience of late.
Since his win at the 2019 Phoenix Open, he’s wandered the golf…
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