Top 20 Players to Watch in 2019: No. 10 Rickie Fowler

Rickie Fowler doesn’t always get the credit he deserves. He’s grown into one of the PGA TOUR’s absolute best players, maturing in front of the world over much of the last decade. Now, he’ll look to take one more leap in his career in 2019.

Rickie Fowler might have just put together one of the quietest solid years on the PGA TOUR in recent memory. And yet, still, it seems as though people forget just how good he is. Perhaps it’s the ridiculous standard we all started to hold him to once he proved that he could be a winner at the highest level. Regardless, it’s time we take another look at Fowler and realize that he’s still one of the elite in the golfing world.

Fowler finished the 2018 season with six top-ten finishes in 20 starts, as well as coming in 17th in the final FedEx Cup standings. And part of that was working with an oblique injury that lingered for a month during the big-time closing stretch of the TOUR schedule.

"“Seventh tee, 6-iron at Akron on Saturday,” Fowler recalled, citing the exact moment he felt the injury would be an issue. “I felt a little bit of discomfort there leading into it, but that was where I really felt it and played through it Saturday there and Sunday and then tried to rest and recover as much as I could going into the PGA [Championship].”"

Fowler shot a Sunday 73 at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational that week to finish in 17th place, and he followed it up with a T12 performance at Bellerive. He wound up missing the first two FedEx Cup Playoff events to recover, but frankly, the season he had already put together was almost solid enough to carry him through to the TOUR Championship automatically.

The only thing Rickie Fowler didn’t do in 2018, really, was win. However, he came close several times, most notably at the Masters. At Augusta, Fowler found himself seven shots behind eventual winner Patrick Reed at the cut, and five behind heading into the final round, despite shooting a bogey-free 65 (-7) on Saturday. While Reed took home the green jacket in the end, Fowler got white-hot to close the tournament, finishing just one shot out of a playoff.

Fowler just turned 30 on December 18th, so I’m not ready to have the “best player not to win a major” discussion, but really, that’s the last boundary for a player who has literally grown up in front of our eyes. And I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if that box got checked off in the new year.

The obvious opportunity for him is coming once again at the Masters. Augusta National is a course that rewards familiarity most of the time, and the Oklahoma State product has made the most of what he’s learned. In the last five years, he’s finished T5-T12-MC-T11-2 at Augusta. Outside of the elite tier over that time – Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy, Justin Rose, etc. – that’s clearly a player who’s one or two good breaks from a breakthrough.

He’s also got decent history at Bethpage Black, host of this year’s PGA Championship, with a pair of top-25 finishes in the two most recent editions of The Barclays, in 2012 and 2016. Pebble Beach will be a unique challenge at the U.S. Open, and Royal Portrush will be new to almost everybody not named Rory McIlroy.

Still, what stands out over virtually everything else is what so many doubted early in Rickie Fowler’s career: his maturity. He’s become a pro’s pro without losing any of the edge that made him such an entertaining player in the beginning. And for that, I can’t help but watch with high expectations as 2019 begins.

Heck, maybe he’ll even get to wear a little green to his wedding reception. It worked for Sergio.