Formally one of the top putters/players on the PGA Tour, Rickie Fowler has slumped badly...
Golf has been so focused on Fowler’s stumbles that we forget who he was before. His game, sure; the guy who won the 2015 Players Championship and finished a stroke behind Patrick Reed at the 2018 Masters, the guy who made seven appearances for Team USA in the Ryder and Presidents Cups, the guy who finished T-5/T-2/T-2/T-3 at the 2014 majors, joining Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods as the only players to finish in the top five in all the big four in one year. Those displays fed into expectations, expectations we placed on him and expectations that he has not come close to fulfilling.
In sports, one of the greatest sins in the perception of talent unfulfilled. Not helping that perception was an infamous quote by his former teacher Butch Harmon, who asked Fowler if he wanted “to be a Kardashian or are you going to be a golf pro?” His omnipresence in commercials fueled complaints by the golf cognoscenti that Fowler was overrated and overexposed. Unfortunately, that belief overshadows what he accomplished, which is a lot. It also overshadows that Fowler was that rare bird that was more than a player. He was one of the faces of the tour’s youth revolution and at a time when the game was in desperate need of an engaging, likable personality he filled the void and then some. He was not phony; acts of Fowler’s charity and kindness when the cameras are off are legendary. One could argue the same player that is overexposed is vastly underappreciated.