Playuh

Rickie Fowler has always been a high quality golfer who put up a lot of solid golf scores. He’s always looked energetic and hip while doing it, and has become quite a draw for golf fans, especially the younger ones. In a sport that most non-golf fans consider to not be cool, Fowler is one guy who shows up at a golf course, walks around with a swagger, hits a lot of good shots and gets people thinking, “this guy is cool.”

He’s been “good television” for the sport, as he has taken over the Paine Stewart role as the “stylish golfer” who can get away with wearing bright, flashy colors on a golf course and still play golf well enough to make the colorful stuff not look stupid. Advertisers love the clean, boyish looks that make him look to the younger audience like the kid that other kids want to be like. Indeed, he’s one of the few golfers out there who has a legion of fans who not only follow him, they dress up just like him (he has the equivalent of his own fashion line in golf attire), and then follow him.

He’s the kind of guy that looked about 16 when he was 21 and about 20 now that he’s 26. Some people have all the luck. Whatever age they ever arrive at in life, they always look about five years younger than they really are.

There has always been a fatal flaw in his game down the stretch. An errant drive, a missed putt (even though he’s a good putter most of the time), an iron shot that goes awry. Even though he had a pretty stellar record as an amateur, and has had a good enough game to make a Ryder Cup team, he has always seemed to be “not quite good enough” to beat the big boys in a big tournament.

But that all changed this past weekend at the very important golf tournament they call The Players Championship. In this tournament, they invite ALL of the top players in the WORLD to play in an event they like to say is as important and as big as the majors (if there ever was a fifth major, this one would be it). In THIS tournament, Rickie Fowler did the type of things that only Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus in the best playing days of their prime could have done. Rickie Fowler went into the back nine of this tournament still “a kid,” and by the time it was over, he became a MAN.

With six holes to play, Fowler was 6 under par, and not even on the first page of the leader board. The leaders were battling somewhere around 10 or so under par at the time. Fowler birdied the 13th hole, which was a nice blip on the radar screen and parred the tough 14th hole, which still left him much too far off the lead to be considered “within striking distance.” He then birdied 15 to get himself to 8 under and perhaps to the bottom of the first page of the leader board.

Most golfers would have been happy with the surge to the top and they’d take their “top ten money” to the bank, but Fowler has always been a kind of gambling type, and this version of Rickie Fowler hit a long fairway metal over the water on a par five (he carried the water by a couple of feet), got a fortuitous bounce and the ball nestled up to about two feet away for a kick in eagle. 10 under par and now tied for the lead and a factor. (He was seven groups ahead of the final group, with the leaders bunched up there at 10 under.)

The winner of this tournament would have to face (and conquer) that famous island green par three 17th hole and its far right pin placement, where many players in the past have completely fallen apart by dunking it into the water. Fowler stepped up, hit it right at the stick and birdied 17 to go 11 under. He birdied a tough 18th hole to go to 12 under and people were cheering as if that kid with the swagger that they all liked had just posted the winning score.

But on this day, it wasn’t going to come easy. Former Players winner Sergio Garcia and relative newcomer Kevin Kisner also came in with enough birdies down the stretch to tie Fowler at 12 under. They played a three hole (16, 17 and 18, perhaps the most famous three hole finishing stretch in golf, even more so than Augusta) aggregate playoff, and Fowler and Kisner’s one under eliminated Garcia. They went to 17 again, now in sudden death, and Kisner’s shot to 12 feet was topped by Fowler’s bulls eye of a shot (to the right of the far right pin at 17) that ended up about four feet away. Fowler calmly sunk his putt and won the title.

This time, Rickie Fowler didn’t just score another top ten or top five, he WON THE PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIP over the best field in golf. He had played his final ten holes in EIGHT under par. He had birdied the treacherous 17th hole FIVE times during this tournament. But most importantly, he played CLUTCH golf down the stretch when he needed it. On this day, on those final ten holes, on that stretch of the difficult Sawgrass layout, Fowler jumped his game up to a level that would have probably beaten every other player (Rory, Tiger, Jack, Arnie, Hogan, Snead, everybody) who has ever played the game.

He came into this tournament as the brand name of Rickie Fowler, the well dressed, kid of a young golfer who was gonna someday be something more than the guy who garnered a lot of top tens, but who could never win the big one. He came out of this tournament a man. A man who has just captured one of the marquee events in all of golf in dramatic fashion.

He went in a player, and came out a PLAYUH.