Monday Rap: Rickie Fowler Is A Winner Again, Talor Gooch's Unexpected Starring Role And We Have Some LEAKS!

Icon Sportswire. Getty Images.

Confession: I wasn't sure I was even going to write this piece. It seemed a perfect spot on the calendar for golf to take a little mid-summer respite. It would've been well earned after  another major championship/designated event back-to-back stretch that took us to both coasts, produced some screw-the-suits controversy at the U.S. Open and provided a feel-good story with Keegan Bradley getting it done at (quasi) home. Some players, however, are worth writing about even in the dog days of July, as the tour meanders from one pillow-soft Midwest layout to another. Rickie Fowler, of course, is one of those guys. 

Rickie Fowler is a winner once again

This was coming. It was a Tiger-2018 like comeback in how progressive it was. First he made a bunch of cuts in a row. Next he planted himself on a major championship leaderboard and hung there for multiple sleeps. Then he flirted with 59 at the Travelers. Finally, relegated to tape-delay purgatory, it happened: Rickie Fowler is once again a winner on the PGA Tour, edging out Collin Morikawa and Adam Hadwin on the first playoff hole to win the Rocket Mortgage Classic at Detroit Golf Club.

"You never really know with this game," Fowler told reporters after the round. "You definitely learn to appreciate the good times and when you're playing well. Yeah, you hope the struggles don't last, but sometimes they last longer than you would hope for. Like I said, even when you're playing well, it's not going to last forever. Being that I've been one of the best players in the world, plenty of good finishes and wins, I knew what I was capable of, but it's tough when you're struggling for that long of a period of time.

"But I knew it wasn't far off and just kind of had to keep putting the time in, keep grinding, keep pushing. Then started to see some positive results and starting to build some confidence and momentum last fall."

Struggles, of course, is a relative term. Fowler never had to worry about where his next meal's coming from. His five previous victories on Tour, plus the endorsement lucre that has made him an easy target at times, guaranteed that. And for as long as he felt like a non-factor in top-level events, his world ranking never dropped outside the top 200. This wasn't an Ian Baker-Finch or even a David Duval-level career downfall. As is always the case, and I've been part of the problem before, the social media slobberfest went above and beyond in framing this like some sort of against-all-odds, back-against-the-wall triumph from the jaws of defeat. A story of survival amidst armageddon. Sure, he had lots of money, more than enough to just stop playing golf if that's what he'd have chosen to do. But to suggest that a 34-year-old would just "ride off into the sunset" because his golf game has slipped about a stroke a round is…rather over the top. We romanticize athletic careers and treat normal-human actions from players, like still trying to improve when your job performance has slipped a notch, as monumental feats of perseverance. 

This isn't a shot at Rickie, at all. It's a commentary on the oft-nauseating reaction from my peers and the general public. It was the same shit when Spieth finally won again and everyone acted like he'd continued to play golf after having a leg amputated. It's like, what was the alternative?! Was this once elite athlete just going to say fuck it and quit because things got tough for a while? Please. 

That aside…yes, Rickie is back in a huge way. Data Golf, surely a more accurate system given the OWGR's systemic issues at present, pegs Big Dig Rick as the No. 6 player in the world at the moment. It sounds a bit inflated until you zoom out: he's got 15 top-25 finishes in 20 starts this year. He held the 18, 36- and 54-hole lead at the last major championship and has kept the pedal down in his two starts since. He's eighth on the PGA Tour in strokes gained overall for the season, eighth in FedEx Cup points and in great position to make the Ryder Cup team. 

That was also a much-needed week from Collin Morikawa, who'd dropped to the fringes of the Ryder Cup picture with a pretty barren stretch that saw him nab just one top-10 finish in his last 14 starts heading into Detroit. His winless streak is nearly two years now, but that T2 was his best showing since he began the year with back-to-back top three finishes out west. Most promisingly, he's gained ground putting in four consecutive starts. That's always going to be the key for him, and he ranks second in strokes gained approach but still outside the top 100 in putting despite the four solid weeks in a row. His pedigree's likely enough to give him a final push toward getting a pick—and yes, we're officially at that time of the year when we view every round through the lens of Rome. Welcome. Glad you're here. Might be a few beers in the fridge. 

"It'll be exciting heading to The Open," Morikawa said after shooting an eight-under 64 to get into the playoff. "I'm going to take Scottish off, I just haven't played in the last two years well there, so we're going to get a little more links prep out there. This is kind of how the golf I wanted to play. Today I thought I played really well, first three days I thought it was pretty mediocre. It's kind of the old Collin hopefully back, just knowing that we're going to keep it in front of myself, give myself some looks, and when putts go in and shots are a little closer we have days like today. It will be really exciting for me I think heading to The Open."

Bernhard Langer is the Sr. Goat

This didn't get much play, with this being a holiday weekend and senior golf being senior golf. I keep pretty close tabs on the 50+ circuit but I don't follow it quite as closely as the big tour, and I keep expected this to be the year that I finally have to scroll a few times before seeing LANGER on the leaderboard. 

Advertisement

Nope. 

The ageless wonder, the German driving machine, the most dangerous man with a hybrid in his hand, he's done it again—at damn near 66 years old, Langer just won the U.S. Senior Open for his 12th senior major and his 46th career victory on the PGA Tour Champions. Both of those are records. Of course they are. Who the hell has time to win 46 tournaments including 12 majors after reaching the healf-century mark?

Bernhard Langer, that's who. It's because he's not on the same timeline as the others. Generally speaking, it's the just-turned-50 guys who do some serious damage out there. They still have all that speed and so they beat up on the older guys. Phil Mickelson followed this playbook to a T. So has Padraig Harrington, who still hits it a country mile and has been a dominant force since turning 50. But Langer seems allergic to the late-50s slowdown that comes for virtually every professional golfer. And he's not just winning on toothless layouts; this was the toughest golf course they'll play all year, with SentryWorld growing some serious rough and producing much more carnage than LACC did. The cut was +9 and just eight guys finished the week under par. Langer's seven-under total of 277 was good for a two-shot victory. 

"There are a lot more aches and pains than 10 years ago," Langer told reporters in Wisconsin after the victory. "I still enjoy the game. If I play like I did this week, I'm going to keep playing. There have been the odd week when I thought, 'What were you doing out here? Go home and play with the grandkids.'"

I'm sure the others guys in the field wish he would already. 

Now, do I wish there was a little more daylight between Mr. Langer's left hand and his chest when he putts? I do. I do indeed. Is he anchoring that broomstick to his chest? We can't say for sure; no one's called him on it, and if you're doing that much winning surely they're keeping a close eye on you. All that said…yeah, I wish there was a little more daylight between Mr. Langer's left hand and his chest when he putts. I think that's a fair dream. 

Talor Gooch, A Character

There's a comedy show in development, or at least there was before the writers' strike, that's loosely based on the PGA Tour-LIV Golf drama. Will Ferrell's attached to the project, and you gotta think he's playing a Phil Mickelson-type character with, hopefully, some Kenny Powers mixed in. Somewhere in that show has to be a Talor Gooch character, for the previously little-known Oklahoman has played an unexpected starring role in the Schism. 

Way back when the initial list of players dropped, the guys who'd taken the leap of faith to play in LIV London and face bans from the PGA Tour, it was Gooch's name that truly came out of left field. Yes, DJ and Phil were more significant gets, but both those guys were past their primes and had long been rumored to be considering the payday. Gooch was a 30-year-old, ascending, in-his-prime guy who hadn't yet been linked with the Saudis. His name appeared almost out of nowhere. He then claimed, somehow, that he didn't expect to be banned from the PGA Tour for his decision. Then, after his 4 Aces team won their first team title, he non-ironically compared the atmosphere to a Ryder Cup, somewhere he quite evidently has never been. He was one of the three players who sued the PGA Tour hoping to be allowed to play in the FedEx Cup playoffs. 

He was unsuccessful then, but Gooch wouldn't stay out of the headlines long because that's just where he lives now. Gooch won LIV events in back-to-back weeks earlier this year in Asia only to actually drop in the world rankings during that stretch. That kicked off a whole new round of drama. Gooch had qualified for this year's U.S. Open by qualifying for last year's Tour Championship (despite leaving the PGA Tour before the playoffs). But, during the offseason, the USGA tweaked its wording to grant exemptions only to those players qualified and eligible for the Tour Championship, which Gooch was not given his jump to LIV. Instead of simply trying to qualify like a bunch of his peers, Gooch took his ball and went home, drawing attention to the petty move from the USGA online and refusing to try to get into the LACC field via a 36-hole qualifier. Two things can be (and are) true at once: the move from the USGA was busch league, and so was Gooch's reaction to it. 

Advertisement

He's back again. Gooch won LIV's event at Valderrama this weekend for his third victory of the LIV season. He currently leads the points standings and we have no idea what to make of that, because he's playing in 54-hole events against the same 48 players ever week. We know he's playing well, and we know he thinks he deserves Ryder Cup consideration. But it's still very hard to contextualize LIV finishes, particularly when you've only played twice against full fields this year: a meh T34 at the Masters and a missed cut at the PGA Championship. 

“If apples were to apples, the guy leading the FedExCup and the guy leading the LIV standings," Gooch said. "I think my play has shown that it's at least worth a discussion.”

But he's only the second most-likely LIV player to make the team. Brooks Koepka is a virtual shoe-in; he has two top-two finishes in majors this season, including winning the PGA Championship. And unlikely Gooch, he hasn't been a magnet for drama or a shit-stirrer. The PGA Tour guys still like him because he didn't trash them or give them a legal headache. The same is true for Dustin Johnson, but he's 39 and hasn't shown nearly as well as Koepka has in the majors. Bryson DeChambeau, who finished second at Valderrama, has played on two Ryder Cup teams and has a top 10 at the U.S. Open. It's possible to make this team by playing on LIV Golf, but it's exceedingly difficult to make this team based solely on your LIV Golf performances. It's why I don't like Gooch's chances to make the team. I do, however, love his chances to stay in the headlines the rest of the year. They can't get enough of the guy. 

We have LEAKS!

Not often you get to cover leaks as a golf writer, but these are strange times. Three-hundred-plus pages have leaked to SI ahead of the PGA Tour's appearance at Congress next week, and there's really not much we already didn't know. In response to the threat posed by LIV, the PGA Tour fired up a concerted PR campaign to paint LIV as the bad guy and vilify players who had made the jump. Again, no surprise there to anyone who's been paying attention. There's some interesting inside-baseball type procedural stuff that you may find interesting, like evidence that the DP World Tour was in conversations with the PIF about joint ventures as late as summer 2021. But perhaps the most notable leaks were talking points documents that were provided to Jay Monahan ahead of a players meeting and, allegedly, to Tiger Woods. Included are bullet-point nuggets and some direct quotes to use. 

I got a laugh out of the whole thing. Namely, two parts. Yasir Al-Rumayyan and Greg Norman simply refusing Congress' request to appear—you can do that?!—and Tiger Woods sending his first tweet of substance since the "merger" for one reason and one reason only: to cover his ass legally. 

Woods didn't speak publicly after the announcement of the PGA/PIF deal that he was so vehemently against. He's been conspicuously quiet on the matter, which was negotiated without his knowledge or insight. Perhaps it was a stark reminder to him that he won't be a key figure in the NewCo moving forward; Woods has played one non-major since his accident, and it was the event he hosted. He's just not going to play much on the PGA Tour (or whatever it's called) moving forward, and while he's a crucial guy to have on your side in any golf battle, maybe his backing isn't the 100 percent pre-requisite to anything happening in golf like it was back in the 2000s. Either way, just a funny tweet for the 15-time major winner to have to send, particularly given the context. 

Elsewhere…

—The first "Nine at Mine" video dropped last week while we were down in Pinehurst shooting the Barstool Writer Cup. The response to my match with Fat Perez of Bob Does Sports has been awesome, and we're hard at work planning the next episodes for this series, where I travel to play with an athlete/celebrity (so non professional golfer) for a nine-hole match at their club. 

—The BDS guys just dropped the other half of this day, a nine-hole match on their channel. 

—Rickie Fowler admitted on Thursday that he made a few late bogeys because…because he had to shit. And to think, the victory could've been even more comfortable…

—Good stuff out of PGA Tour rookie Eric Cole, who planned to fly from Hartford to Pittsburgh right after the Travelers to play in the Frank B. Furhrer Inviational, a mini-tour event with a $20,000 grand prize. Why was a guy who's made almost $3 million on the PGA Tour this year gonna do that? Because Cole is not your average PGA Tour player; he's a 35-year-old rookie who toiled in the minor leagues for over a decade before he got his break. Back in those lean years, the Frank B. Fuhrer was a hugely important tournament for him. Those kind of paydays don't come around much on the mini tours, and Cole credits winning that tournament with keeping his dream alive. So this year, after the namesake for the tournament passed away, Cole wanted to tee it up to honor a man who he grew to admire and a tournament that played a vital role in his career development. 

Advertisement

Only problem? Weather on the east coast canceled his flight from Hartford to Pittsburgh. Instead of simply withdrawing, Cole drew 7.5 hours through Sunday night, arrived in time to shoot 63 on Monday and win the three-day tournament by 9 shots. He donated the winning check back to the family to donate to local charities because it was the right thing to do. Good stuff all around. 

—Have a wonderful holiday. See you here next week. 

Until then,

Dan