Weekly Recap: Everyone Knows It's Rickie

This article is part of our Weekly PGA Recap series.

Rickie Fowler came to the 18th tee on Sunday needing a birdie to get into a playoff.

He had kicked away nearly four full days of top-of-the-leaderboard play with some sloppy shots down the stretch, the latest being a drive that missed the fairway left. He had to get up and down from 144 yards on one of the few holes at Detroit Golf Club with any teeth. All of 84 golfers had made the cut and there had been only seven birdies there all day.

What happened next became one of the biggest moments on the PGA Tour in years.

Fowler not only birdied the hole with an electrifying approach that landed three feet from the cup, he did it again 20 minutes later on the first playoff hole to set off delirium at the Rocket Mortgage Classic and throughout the golf world with his first victory in more than four years.

Fowler's 12-foot birdie putt on the first extra hole not only stunned playoff combatants Collin Morikawa and Adam Hadwin, it completed a remarkable career metamorphosis just five months shy of his 35th birthday.

The orange-clad Fowler was a generational fan favorite from the moment he arrived on Tour out of Oklahoma State a decade ago. Kids loved him. They dressed like him. He signed autographs for them like no one else, maybe in all of sports.

His game reached the heights of No. 4 in the world and a victory at the 2015 PLAYERS Championship. You couldn't turn on your TV without seeing him. 

He never reached the heights everyone expected -- No. 1 in the world, Masters champion, multiple majors -- and he then declined so severely he was ranked almost 200th in the world late last year. It was hard to watch.

The fact that Fowler turned it around at all, much less so quickly, to now stand at No. 23 in the world, with a return to prominence and a lock to secure a Ryder Cup berth, is remarkable.  

After hitting rock bottom, Fowler reunited with old swing coach Butch Harman and parted with longtime caddie Joe Skovron. He flamed out of the playoffs last year after one event. Five weeks later, he arrived at the 2022-23 season opening Fortinet Championship ranked 185th in the world. He tied for sixth. A month later, he was runner-up at the ZOZO. He has eight top-10s and 15 top-25s in 20 starts this season. He's missed only two cuts. He's seventh on Tour in Strokes Gained: Approach, eighth in Tee-to-Green, 30th in Putting.

The comeback is real. The golf is real.

We don't know how far Fowler will go, whether he will return to the top-10 or ever win a major. He was in the final pairing on Sunday at the U.S. Open just last month, only to walk 18 holes with the eventual champion, Wyndham Clark.

What we do know is that there could be nothing bigger or more important for the PGA Tour right now than a Fowler victory. Tiger Woods as we know him is gone and never coming back. Phil Mickelson has gone over to the dark side.

Through the years of decline, the young fans never left, never stopped rooting for him. He's changed. In many ways. He's married, he's got a little girl. And still new fans keep coming, little kids maybe not even born when he arrived on Tour.

You want to talk about "grow the game"? Nobody can grow the game of golf like a great-once-again Fowler. 

MONDAY BACKSPIN

Collin Morikawa
Morikawa has a pretty long winless stretch of his own – since the Open Championship 24 months ago. His short game and putting are the issue. They're not terrible, just average. But at the Rocket Mortgage, Morikawa ranked 12th in the field in SG: Around-the-Green and 24th in SG: Putting. Really, that would be good enough most weeks. But with Fowler and Hadwin also playing at a high level, and scores getting into the 20s, it wasn't good enough this week. But if he keeps it up, a win is coming, and that has to thrill U.S. Ryder Cup captain Zach Johnson.

Adam Hadwin
Hadwin hasn't won in more than six years, since the 2017 Valspar. But he is a very solid player, albeit one with just that lone career win. He can't hit it as far as Fowler or even Morikawa, but for the week he ranked 10th in SG: Approach, sixth in Around-the-Green and second in Putting. That's his formula for success, often at a cheaper DraftKings price than he should be. Hadwin is now ranked 54th in the world.

Peter Kuest
Kuest surely opened some eyes over his four days at Detroit Golf Club. Virtually unknown, he was a Monday qualifier who came within inches of a birdie on 18 and leaving with Special Temporary Membership on the PGA Tour. In just his 10th career tournament, he tied for fourth, earning a spot in this week's John Deere Classic. The 25-year-old Brigham Young alum pounded the ball off the tee, leading the field in driving distance at 331 yards. He also tied for 14th a couple of months ago at the Byron Nelson.

Taylor Moore
Moore was at or near the top of the leaderboard all week as he searched for his second win of the season. He led the field in SG: Putting, which is a pretty good thing in a birdie-fest. On the season, he ranks 15th and is average or better in every strokes-gained category. Moore had missed three straight cuts and had had only one top-25 since winning the Valspar in March, so maybe this signifies he's over his life-altering moment of winning on the PGA Tour.

Lucas Glover
Glover was (and still is) amid a brutal season in which he had missed half of his 20 cuts and was (and still is) outside the top-125 in the point standings. He was ranked 187th on Tour in SG: Putting, out of 191 guys. Yet at the Rocket Mortgage he ranked fifth in the field. That's amazing. And also shouldn't be counted on to happen again.
 
Adam Schenk
Another great week for the Schenkster. He finished solo seventh, and now has three top-10s in his past five starts, including that heartbreaking runner-up at the Charles Schwab. Schenk moved to a career-best 51st in the world rankings. He's in the John Deere field this week and he has to feel good about his chances.

Justin Lower
Lower's best result in almost nine months was a solo eighth. He's made only half of his 26 cuts, but four of his past six, with a top-25 at the Canadian Open. So he might be able to keep it going in some of these lesser tournaments before the playoffs start.

Brian Harman
Harman has now put together three good tournaments in a row, turning around a miserable 2023. He shot 65 the first day of the U.S. Open, was runner-up at the Travelers and now tied for ninth at Detroit. 

Alex Noren
Noren really doesn't have much of a chance to be on Europe's Ryder Cup team – he missed the cut at THE PLAYERS and the three majors so far – but his tie for ninth was his best finish on the PGA Tour in 2023.

Aaron Rai
Rai had a tough stretch going a couple of months ago, but his tie for ninth this week reinforces he has turned a corner. The Englishman has four top-25s in his past five starts, including a T3 in Canada.

Troy Merritt
Looking at Merritt coming in, it was crazy. He had missed 14 straight cuts (outside the Zurich) yet had been outstanding in this tournament – T14 last year, co-runner-up the year before and T8 before that. So what won out, recent form or course history? Merritt tied for 17th. 

Max Homa
Homa had a hole-in-one on Sunday. He tied for 21st. That's surely better than the past two weeks of missed cuts.

Keegan Bradley
A week after one of the biggest wins of his career, Bradley never contended but went out and played four decent days of golf to tie for 21st.

Dylan Wu
Wu is known commodity among scavengers searching the DraftKings $6000s. He had a great tournament going until shooting 2-over on Sunday while there were 7- and 8-unders on the course. Wu plummeted from top-10 to T24. That would've been great at the beginning of the week but not now.

Sam Bennett
Bennett rebounded from his first missed cut of 2023 at the Travelers with a tie for 29th at the Rocket Mortgage. He will be skipping the John Deere.

Ludvig Aberg
Aberg was on the first page of the leaderboard deep into Saturday, following a 65-67 start. But he fell apart on the back-nine in the third round, then meandered through Sunday and tied for 40th. The youngster will be at the John Deere, where he should be among the favorites.

MISSED CUTS

Justin Thomas, Hideki Matsuyama, Tom Kim, Tony Finau, Austin Eckroat, Gordon Sargent, Zac Blair.
Thomas' troubles continued with another bad trunk-slam. He's down to 20th in the world. But it says here he's still a lock for the Ryder Cup. … For Matsuyama and Kim, these were unexpected missed cuts in a relatively weak field. … The 2022 Rocket Mortgage champion, Finau simply has not been playing well and he may have to turn it around to get a spot on the Ryder Cup team. … Austin Eckroat had been playing great, but you can't make every cut. … Gordon Sargent will get right back at it this week at the John Deere. … A week after winning $1.78 million as runner-up at the Travelers, Blair missed the cut. Still, not a bad two-week average. He'll also play the John Deere.

BRITISH MASTERS

The tournament with Nick Faldo as host was part of the Open Qualifying Series and three players not already exempt into Royal Liverpool got in. Daniel Hillier won it to move to a career-high 135th in the OWGR. Gunner Wiebe and Oliver Wilson got the other two berths.