With The Masters just two weeks away, the final field at Augusta National is close to being finalized. But as it stands right now, Rickie Fowler is not on that list.
Long one of the most popular players on the PGA Tour, Fowler was also once one of the best.
In 2014, he became just the third player ever to finish in the top five of every major championship in a calendar year, joining an exclusive club that then only included Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods (Jordan Spieth joined a year later).
In 2015, of course, he notched what remains the biggest victory of his career with a dramatic playoff win at The Players Championship.
And in 2016, following a win on the European Tour's Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship, he hit his highest-ever position in the Official World Golf Ranking at No. 4.
In the nine years since, however, Fowler has added just four victories to his resume, a stretch that included a four-plus-year gap in between wins before he finally broke the drought at the 2023 Rocket Mortgage Classic, which got him back into the top 25 in the world rankings for the first time in years.
But that rise didn't last long, and since that victory, the 36-year-old has just one top-10 finish, that being a solo fourth at the Zozo Championship this past October.
As such, Fowler has once again slid down the OWGR and entered this week's Texas Children's Houston Open as the 105th-ranked player in the world, which poses a problem for his hopes of teeing up at The Masters.
Rickie Fowler must win one of the Texas events to get into The Masters
For those PGA Tour players not already in the field at The Masters, there are only two ways to get to Augusta between now and then.
The first is to win either this week's Texas Children's Houston Open or next week's Valero Texas Open in San Antonio, as the victor of each earns an automatic exemption to the season's first major, which is how Stephan Jaeger and Akshay Bhatia punched their tickets last year.
The other is to get inside the OWGR top 50 at the conclusion of this week's tourney in Houston.
That's it.
So, for Fowler, it's quite simple. He has to win one of these two stops in the Lone Star State. Period.
Simple math tells us that he needs to jump 55 spots in the world rankings to get into the top 50. And the only way he could do that would be to win this week, as even a solo second won't be nearly enough.
So, again, a win is the only way Fowler makes it to The Masters. And he has already committed to the Valero Texas Open, so he at least gets two cracks at it.
But seeing as how his best finish in five starts this year (not including his withdrawal in Phoenix) is a tie for 18th at the Cognizant, the likelihood of a victory over the next two weeks is pretty low at this point.
Fowler missed The Masters three straight years from 2021 to 2023, but finally returned last year thanks to his aforementioned win at the Rocket Mortgage, tying for 30th.