Rickie Fowler And The Shadow Of His Former Self

Can Rickie Fowler recapture some magic at a familiar locale this week?

Things can change drastically over the course of just a handful of years, just ask Rickie Fowler who is almost unrecognizable from the player that he once was when he last visited TPC Potomac in 2018 for the Quicken Loans National.

When Fowler made his way to Maryland during that final week in June in the summer of 2018 he did so as the 8th ranked player in the World. He had finished runner-up at the 2018 Masters, already had three top 10 finishes for the year, and had missed just three cuts in thirteen starts.

Rickie Fowler was comfortably in every major and every WGC event and the only thing that was absent from his resume that year was a win. He would finish 12th at TPC Potomac that week which came just a year after he had posted a 3rd place finish at the Quicken Loans National in 2017.

Rickie Fowler hardly resembles that player from 2018 coming into this week.

Fowler himself surely wouldn’t have envisioned how far he would fall in just four years. He has gone from being the highest-ranked player in the field in both the World and FedEx Cup rankings that week in June 2018, to now being the World’s 146th player entering this week’s 2022 Wells Fargo Championship.

Rickie Fowler is barely a shadow of his former self as things have seemingly only gone from bad to worse. His last win came in February 2019 at the Waste Management Phoenix Open and it was just a couple of months after his win in Phoenix that he split with former coach Butch Harmon after the longtime coach had decided to retire.

The 2015 Players Champion would eventually record four more top 10 finishes in 2019, and even though he started 2020 with two additional top 10s it was really the last time that Fowler remotely resembled the great golfer he once was. The next year was a tough one for Rickie as it was for the majority during the pandemic period, he recorded just two top 20 finishes the rest of the year and missed six cuts, it was the most missed cuts that Fowler had had since 2014.

Things, unfortunately, did not get any better for the 33-year-old on the course as the calendar turned to 2021. For the first time since 2010 he missed out on playing in the Masters, he wasn’t part of the US Open after failing to qualify, and he didn’t get to take part in any of the WGC events. Fowler missed eight cuts and finished inside of the top 10 of an event just twice in 22 starts in 2021. When the year was over he had slipped to 85th in the World.

Things haven’t improved so far this year for Rickie Fowler as he has made eight starts and missed five cuts, his best finish a lowly T-42nd at the Honda Classic a few months ago.  A lot has changed since that 2018 visit to TPC Potomac for Fowler, much has changed since he won for the very first time at a Wells Fargo Championship, and unfortunately, things look increasingly bleak for the player beloved by both fans and peers.

The harsh realization that this great player may never get back to being the player he once was is slowly setting in, but maybe, just maybe, he can produce something magical once again at TPC Potomac during a Wells Fargo Championship.