A crowd of 2,500 fans will be packed around the first tee at Quail Hollow.
The PGA Tour season has come and gone and now golf fans have their eyes fixed on Quail Hollow Club for next month’s 2022 Presidents Cup.
If you can’t make it to Charlotte, North Carolina, for the biennial matches that pit the best players in the United States against a team of the best players from around the world (Europe and LIV Golf excluded), the folks behind the Presidents Cup have released a little teaser that gives golf fans an idea of what to expect at what should make for a wild first tee atmosphere.
While the animated graphic shows a good mix of American and International supporters, the first tee setup will feature 2,500 fans that will almost assuredly be dominated by the Red, White and Blue.
The Presidents Cup is scheduled for September 20-25 at Quail Hollow Country Club in Charlotte, North Carolina.
In April, Captain Davis Love III named Zach Johnson and Fred Couples as two of his four assistants for the 2022 Presidents Cup. He’s now filled the two remaining spots.
Webb Simpson, a member of Quail Hollow Club, and Steve Stricker, the 2021 Ryder Cup winning captain, will both serve as assistant captains to Love at the matches scheduled for Sept. 20-25 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
“I am thrilled to join Davis, Fred, Zach and Webb at Quail Hollow this September, and look forward to helping the U.S. Team as much as possible in an effort to retain the Cup,” Stricker said in a release. “With the current standings, many of the players on my team at Whistling Straits will be competing in Charlotte, and I know we’re all excited to watch these rising stars continue to perform on a global stage.”
Stricker served as Presidents Cup captain in 2017 at Liberty National where the United States won 19-11.
Davis Love III, Captains Assistant of the U.S. Team, and Steve Stricker, Captain of the U.S. Team, wear We The People fan hats on the first tee during the Sunday singles matches at the Presidents Cup at Liberty National Golf Club on October 1, 2017, in Jersey City, New Jersey. (Photo by Chris Condon/PGA TOUR)
“I’m excited to see the Presidents Cup contested on my home course in a great sports town like Charlotte, and I know the fans are going to show up with tremendous support for the U.S. Team,” said Simpson. “I’ve had the good fortune of playing for Davis in past international events and he will have this team prepared to play each day. It’s an honor to be named a captain’s assistant, and I look forward to helping the guys with a bit of course knowledge and a fun, enjoyable team atmosphere.”
Simpson, who will be an assistant for the first time, has represented the United States in three Presidents Cups (2011, 2013 and 2019).
As of August 2, the six automatic qualifiers for the U.S. team are Scottie Scheffler, Patrick Cantlay, Sam Burns, Xander Schauffele, Justin Thomas and Tony Finau.
“For it to be Erica’s first Mother’s Day and for her to be here with Poppy — really, really cool.”
Throughout his stellar career that is far from finished but destined to include induction into the World Golf Hall of Fame, Rory McIlroy, the Boy Wonder from Holywood, Northern Ireland, has dealt with his share of hard knocks.
Words he wished he could take back. Off-course adversity that tested his mettle. Slumps here and there. An ankle injury suffered while playing futbol that robbed him a chance of playing the Open Championship on golf’s most hallowed ground, the rumpled landscape of the Old Course in St. Andrews, the Home of Golf.
But one of his biggest obstacles he faced head-on began early in 2020.
The four-time major champion and then world No. 1 was in full flight until the COVID-19 global pandemic knocked the world off its axis. McIlroy had ripped off four top-5 finishes in his first four starts of 2020 and was clearly the best player on the planet before the pandemic took substantial root in the U.S.
Following the PGA Tour’s 13-week hiatus as the country tried to find some footing, McIlroy lost his and was unable to discover his best step and top form.
He thought he’d cherish the stillness of the tournaments when play resumed in June of 2020 with fans not allowed to attend due to COVID-19 restrictions, but he was thrown by the silence and his game followed along.
“I thought I’d like the peace and quiet when we returned but I missed the crowds,” he said. “I feed off the energy so much.”
Turned out the serenity placed him into an uncomfortable and annoying lull of impatience, indifference, frustration and a maddening battle with his swing. He would go 22 tournaments upon the PGA Tour’s return June of 2020 with zero victories and a lean number of meaningful Sundays.
After missing the cut in the 2021 Masters, which followed Friday trunk slams in The Players Championship and Genesis Invitational, McIlroy determined he needed to get away from the game and took three weeks off.
Well, he didn’t actually take three weeks off. While he was at home in his Florida compound, he brought noted swing coach Pete Cowen on board while staying with longtime coach Michael Bannon to help him sort through swing issues. McIlroy said he grinded the three weeks away from the PGA Tour and felt really good about his iron play. And he eschewed his former bread-and-butter draw with the driver in favor of hitting fades with his biggest weapon.
And he felt good about what was on his horizon – a trip to the Queen City. McIlroy returned from his hiatus at the Wells Fargo Championship in Charlotte, N.C., one of his favorite tournaments played on one of his favorite courses residing in one of his favorite cities in the world.
It was on the rugged Quail Hollow Club layout where he broke his PGA Tour maiden in 2010, punctuating his victory with a 60-footer for birdie on the 72nd hole, and became the tournament’s only multiple winner with another victory in 2015. He also lost in a playoff in 2012 and had four other top 10s in nine starts heading into the 2021 Wells Fargo Championship.
“This place has been good to me,” he said. “Ever since I first set eyes on this golf course, I loved it from the first time I played it, and that love has sort of been reciprocated back. I’ve played so well here over the years.”
So despite falling to 15th in the official world golf rankings – his worst standing in more than 12 years – harboring some doubts about his game – he had not played on the weekend in two months – and dealing with the second-longest winless drought of his career – he hadn’t won since the 2019 HSBC Champions in China – McIlroy was in good spirits upon his arrival in Charlotte.
All was good – until it wasn’t.
McIlroy suffers neck pain
On the driving range as he finished his prep work on Wednesday, McIlroy took a swing and his neck locked up. For the grace of the golf gods, he had a late tee time for Thursday’s first round, allowing him, he hoped, enough time to receive treatment that he hoped would unlock the pain.
But as he took to the tee for the first round, McIlroy was just hoping to make it to the weekend to stack more reps into his process of finding his old self again. The pain in his neck had subsided and he posted a 1-over-par 71 in the opening round.
He not only made it to the weekend for the first time in two months, but his second-round 66 also put him on the first page of the leaderboard. His third-round 68 put him in the final group Sunday alongside Keith Mitchell, who held a two-stroke lead and was looking for his second PGA Tour title since earning his first in the 2019 Honda Classic.
Mitchell stretched his lead to three with a birdie on the first. But McIlroy birdied the third and grabbed a share of the lead with a birdie on the seventh. He holed a 10-foot par putt on the par-3 13th, then got up-and-down for birdies with superb bunkers shots on the reachable par-4 14th and the par-5 15th to go up two shots.
Then he survived the final hole.
“It’s never easy to win out here,” McIlroy said about 90 minutes later.
Standing on the 16th tee with his two-shot cushion, McIlroy got a little ahead of himself. He was thinking about snapping his winless drought, thinking about how special it would be to celebrate his victory on Mother’s Day with his wife, Erica, and 8-month-old daughter, Poppy, who were on hand at Quail Hollow Club.
And then the Green Mile snapped him back to reality. That’s the nickname of the punishing three-hole finishing stretch at Quail Hollow Club, a 1,190-yard span of pain consisting of the water-guarded par-4 16th, par-3 17th and par-4 18th.
He made pars on the 16th and 17th and held a two-shot leading standing on the 18th tee – 494 yards away from his wife and daughter, his first victory in nearly 550 days, and a heavy dose of relief and confidence.
Rory McIlroy plays his shot from the 11th tee during the second round of the 2021 Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow Club on May 7, 2021 in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Photo by Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images)
Penalty seems best option
Unleashing his tee shot with driver in hand, McIlroy froze. His drive was heading left and towards the long and winding creek that runs nearly the length of the hole and has been home to many ruined scorecards.
The ball avoided the H2O but wound up in a ghastly lie in the deep rough. Upon seeing his ball, McIlroy, his heart racing, started to think of his best options. He considered hitting the ball from where it rested, but it was well below his feet and nearly buried in nasty grass. That’s when his caddie, Harry Diamond, stepped in.
He suggested taking a penalty drop to have a more favorable lie, which would mean hitting his third shot but one that would allow his boss a better chance to try and hit the ball onto the fat part of the green from 200 yards with an 8-iron and then two-putt for the victory.
McIlroy chose correctly. He took the drop, knocked the ball onto the green and then two-putted from 44 feet for his third victory in the tournament – no one else has more than one.
“Harry’s been there every step of the way,” McIlroy said. “The sort of tough parts that I’ve sort of had to endure over the last few months, he’s been with me every step of the way and it’s nice to come through all of that with him and to get into the winner’s circle again.
“Harry was awesome out there, especially that decision on the last. I was ready to get in there and try to play that with a lob wedge and he was sort of like, ‘Let’s take a step back, let’s think about this, where’s the best place you’re hitting your third from.’ So he calmed me down and slowed me down a little bit and said,
‘Pal, let’s just think about this a little bit.’”
Rory McIlroy poses with the winner’s trophy with his wife Erica and daughter Poppy at the Wells Fargo Championship. (Photo: Jim Dedmon-USA TODAY Sports)
Mother’s Day present for Erica
With a final-round 68, McIlroy finished at 10-under 274 for a one-shot victory over Abraham Ancer. Mitchell finished two back in a tie with Viktor Hovland. It was the first tournament McIlroy’s won three times. It was his 19th PGA Tour title and 27th worldwide. And his first as a father.
McIlroy was clearly moved as he saluted his mother, Rose, and wife and daughter shortly after his winning putt dropped.
“For it to be Erica’s first Mother’s Day and for her to be here with Poppy, really, really cool,” he said. “It was hard for me not to think of that coming down the last few holes and how cool that would be to see them at the back of the 18th green, but I had more pressing issues at the time, so it was pretty easy to get it out of my head. Really cool for them to be here and to be able to celebrate today.”
McIlroy also was very appreciative of the roars returning to golf. After he finished play on the 18th hole, he was serenaded with loud chants of, “Rory! Rory! Rory!”
“It felt like a long time since I won. It just feels awesome,” he said. “There’s been a lot of hard work. I’ve put my head down, I haven’t really looked too much in either direction, I’ve just tried to do what I need to do. For a couple of months there, all that hard work seemed like it was not really getting anywhere, wasn’t providing me with much.
“(Cowen) deserves a good bit of credit for it, for sure. Obviously, Michael Bannon is the one that’s got me all the way to this point, so I’m never going to mention Pete without Michael because Michael deserves a lot of credit, too. Pete and I did some good work last week in Florida and I felt good about my game coming in here, but I wasn’t expecting to come and win first week straight out again. It’s satisfying to see the work is paying off, but it’s just the start.
“There’s so much more I want to achieve and so much more I want to do in the game. But this is, as I said, it’s nice validation that I’m on the right track.”
The vanquished Mitchell paid tribute to McIlroy after the round.
“I loved playing in the last group with Rory, that was a lot of fun,” he said. “Shows you how awesome he is as a player because he didn’t have his best today and he still won and that’s why he’s got majors and a bunch of wins.
“It’s impressive watching that because he had to fight there today.”
The battle continued for McIlroy, 33, as more confrontations remained. Later in the year, he added PGA Tour title No. 20, which earned him lifetime membership on the circuit. But in testament to his magnitude of talent and drive, he has to wait until after the 2022-2023 season for the membership to kick in; a player must play 15 full seasons on the PGA Tour.
But it was there in Las Vegas at The Summit where he said he had learned he didn’t have to play perfect to win on the PGA Tour. That he was going to be himself – which, as his record shows, is the envy of most all of his peers.
He’s comfortable in his skin and again inside the gallery ropes as more battles are to be dealt with. One big question he wants to successfully answer is completing the career Grand Slam. Since 2014, when he won his second PGA Championship to go with an Open Championship and U.S. Open, he’s been asked about winning the Masters to join Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Gary Player, Ben Hogan and Gene Sarazen as the only players to do so.
The questions will persist until he wins a green jacket. But he is up to the task. He’s in a good place in life, and when he finally kicks his heels up in retirement, he’ll look back to the 2021 Wells Fargo Championship as a key moment.
“To bring out the best in myself,” he said that day of victory, “I needed this.”
How neck pain almost kept Rory McIlroy from competing at the Wells Fargo Championship.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Rory McIlroy enjoyed turning 32 on Tuesday and was feeling just fine hitting balls on the range Wednesday getting ready for one of his favorite tournaments.
One swing, however, had him wondering if he’d even get to play.
“I hit a 3‑iron, flushed it and I turned back to talk to Harry (Diamond, his caddie) and as I turned, my left side of my neck just completely locked up and I couldn’t move it,” McIlroy said. “It was really, really strange.”
McIlroy immediately shut his work on the range down and headed for treatment hoping to play in the first round of the Wells Fargo Championship.
“I iced it all of Wednesday afternoon, Wednesday night. I woke up Thursday, didn’t have much movement. Was trying to make a backswing and could only maybe take it half the way back before it started to catch,” McIlroy said. “If I had been playing Thursday morning, I probably would have pulled out, but I had enough time to get treatment Thursday morning, get it loosened up. It was still bothering me on Thursday afternoon. People probably saw the tape that was on my neck, but it sort of loosened up as the week went on.”
And what a week it turned out to be. McIlroy, who hadn’t won in just over 550 days and hadn’t made it to weekend play in two months, won for third time at Quail Hollow with a final-round 68.
McIlroy finished at 10-under 274 and one shot clear of Abraham Ancer. The former world No. 1 and four-time major winner now has 19 PGA Tour titles.
And now he’ll head to Kiawah Island as one of the favorites in the PGA Championship in two weeks. He won the 2012 PGA there by eight shots.
“Hopefully history repeats itself and I can get a lot of confidence from this and go forward,” he said. “But I’m just happy that I can hit the golf shots that I need to under pressure.
“It’s certainly great timing. This is obviously a huge confidence boost going in there knowing that my game is closer than it has been. I’ll be able to poke holes in everything that I did today, it’s certainly far from perfect, but this one is validation that I’m on the right track.”
Bryson DeChambeau flew home to Dallas too soon, but he vaulted up the leaderboard after his return to the Wells Fargo Championship.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Bryson DeChambeau’s whirlwind weekend, which began at 2:45 a.m. Saturday on a private jet in Dallas, ended on a positive note with him beaming in the Queen City.
The Big Man from Big D had flown 1,000 miles westward after thinking he had missed the cut in the Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow. He left the property Friday in a tie for 90th, after all. But midway through the flight, he was alerted that his status on the leaderboard was improving, and shortly after he landed in Texas, he learned he had made the cut on the number.
DeChambeau briefly thought of not going back to the tournament but almost instantly nixed that idea. He got in a workout, had a nice dinner, slept for five hours and rushed to make his 8:10 a.m. third round tee time.
And shot 3-under-par 68.
After sleeping 11 hours Saturday night, he felt a little groggy at the start of Sunday’s final round but perked up and posted another 68. After beginning the third round in a tie for 64th and starting the final round in a tie for 23rd, his 136 total on the weekend left him at 4 under for the tournament and in a tie for 10th when he left Sunday.
“It no doubt was worth it,” DeChambeau said about returning. “That’s what I was hoping to do this weekend when I was on that plane at 2:45 a.m. I wanted to make it worth it. I didn’t want to come out here and finish 60‑whatever, close to last.
“The cost wasn’t really anything I was worried about. I really didn’t want to disappoint Wells Fargo and Quail Hollow and the guys who put up this tournament and give so much to charity. And fans out here, didn’t want to disappoint them. That’s something that’s super important to me about growing the game. I would definitely make that expense twice, twice as much for me to get back here to do that again.”
His superb weekend earned him more World Ranking and FedEx Cup points and a tie for ninth would net him around $210,000. He also was especially pleased with his putting and chipping on the weekend and feels good heading into next week’s AT&T Byron Nelson.
However, he’s still trying to figure some minor issues with his driver.
“I’m going to go home and do a little cleanup work on my body and then tomorrow get right back at it with Chris (Como, his coach) trying to figure out this driver,” he said. “I try to play a draw, but it doesn’t always work out. Sometimes I get the high-right ball and then the snap left. I’ve got to work on keeping it consistent. We’re doing some interesting research at high ball speeds.
“There’s some stuff that’s not lining up with what we know currently right now, and it takes a robot to be able to see what’s going on. So we’re going to be doing research over the next few months to figure out how to get it to go straight at high ball speeds. It’s just not known right now.”
Rory McIlroy posted his first subpar round since the Arnold Palmer Invitational and vaulted up the leaderboard at Quail Hollow Club.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Rory McIlroy joked he was going to punch in the address of Quail Hollow Club into his GPS to make sure he doesn’t miss his tee time for Saturday’s third round of the Wells Fargo Championship.
Then again, McIlroy has lost his bearings of late on the PGA Tour and hasn’t played on a weekend since finishing in a tie for 10th in the Arnold Palmer Invitational two months ago. The stretch included missed cuts in The Players Championship and the Masters and missing weekend play at the World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play.
But he’ll have a late tee time Saturday after he fired a 5-under-par 66 – his first subpar round since the Arnold Palmer Invitational – and vaulted up the leaderboard to stand just three shots out of the lead midway through round two.
That’s a familiar place for McIlroy at Quail Hollow. He won his first PGA Tour title here in 2010, added another in 2015, lost in a playoff in 2012 and has four other top-10s in nine starts.
McIlroy, who has slipped to No. 15 in the official world ranking and hasn’t won since the fall of 2019, said his comfort level here has made it easier for him to turn his fortunes around.
“Especially I feel like I’ve birdied a lot of the hard holes this week, which is nice confidence, but knowing that even if you don’t birdie a par 5 or you don’t take advantage of the easier holes, that you’re hitting it good enough that you can still make birdies on the tougher holes,” he said. “So that probably makes it a touch easier that I am here and I’m somewhere that I am very comfortable here where I’ve had some great success.”
The former World No. 1 and four-time major champion, who turned 32 Tuesday, has just six top-10s in 21 starts since golf returned last June after a 13-week break due to the COVID-19 global pandemic. But he’s in good position to win his 19th PGA Tour title and 28th title worldwide.
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While he hasn’t been seen on the weekend on the PGA Tour for 60 days, he hasn’t wasted his time making the most of Saturdays and Sundays. He and his family went to the Bahamas for four days after missing the cut at the Masters. He went to a dinner parting hosted by U.S. Walker Cup captain Nathanial Crosby.
And he grinded working on his game.
McIlroy brought noted swing coach Pete Cowen on board while staying with longtime coach Michael Bannon to help him sort through issues.
“The one thing that I was really happy about coming in here this week was my iron play, felt like I really found something last week,” McIlroy said. “I didn’t get a chance to show it yesterday because I wasn’t finding the fairway very much, but today, just having some more opportunities to hit good iron shots and give myself birdie chances, I was able to show it a bit today and it was nice.
“I hit some really good shots into the par 3s and that’s something that I haven’t been doing for the last few months, so that was nice.”
As was his work with the driver. McIlroy’s bread-and-butter shot for so many years was hitting a big swinging draw with his driver. But for a couple years now, McIlroy said, he’s committed to hitting a fade. One big reason for the change, he said, have been technological improvements in the modern driver, which he said makes it more difficult for him to draw the ball.
“So I’ve had to adjust,” he said. “That’s how I’ve played most of my life, so it’s committing to seeing a different way to hit tee shots and it’s just, it’s taking a while to get used to it.”
Sure looked like he was used to it in the second round. And it sure looks like McIlroy is on the verge of winning for the first time in 550 days. At least he has a shot at it now that’s he’s got a weekend tee time.
Phil Mickelson and Joel Dahmen spent the lead-up the Wells Fargo chirping at each other on Twitter. Then Mickelson took the lead.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Joel Dahmen poked the bear.
In a friendly Twitter exchange on Wednesday night, Dahmen, a winner of one PGA Tour event, ended his back and forth with World Golf Hall of Famer Phil Mickelson by writing, “I’m excited to see how my game stacks up against the best of the @ChampionsTour.”
Well, Mickelson, 50, who has won twice on the PGA Tour Champions, flexed his PGA Tour muscles playing alongside Dahmen on Thursday and fired a 7-under-par 64 to take the lead through one round of the Wells Fargo Championship at sunlit Quail Hollow.
Mickelson, a winner of 44 PGA Tour titles, including five major championships, made a lone bogey as he bested his finest round of the season by three shots. It was clearly Mickelson’s best showing in 2021; he’s missed four cuts in nine worldwide starts and his best result was a tie for 21st in the Masters.
He has not won since the 2019 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
“I love the banter. I think it’s funny and it kept the atmosphere in our group really light,” Mickelson said. “We laughed a bunch. We had some fun things to talk about, but we were laughing even before we teed off.
“I like how he’s able to laugh at himself and have fun with the game of golf and not take it too seriously. Lanto (Griffin) is the same way, so we had a really fun group.”
Mickelson is two clear of the field. K.H. Lee took the early clubhouse lead with a 66 and was joined there late in the day by Keegan Bradley, who finished second last week in the Valspar Championship. A large group at 67 included Tommy Fleetwood and Gary Woodland.
Bryson DeChambeau and Rory McIlroy, each playing for the first time since the Masters, turned in scores of 70 and 72, respectively.
Mickelson birdied five of six holes in one stretch. His iron play was spot on, but it was a 2-wood – a 11.5-degree 2-wood head he’s using as his 3-wood – that had him excited. But he was most pleased with his attention span.
“Just focus,” Mickelson said about the difference from Thursday and last week’s missed cut in the Valspar Championship. “I’m just present on each shot. This course holds my attention. I’ve been doing some mental exercises and so forth just to try to get my focus to elongate over five hours and so forth.
Phil Mickelson putts for a birdie on 18 during the first round of the Wells Fargo Championship golf tournament. Mandatory Credit: Jim Dedmon-USA TODAY Sports
“That’s been a real struggle for me the last few years because physically, there’s nothing physically holding me back from playing at a high level, but you cannot make mistakes at this level. The guys out here are just so good, and I’ve been making a lot of errors, just simply not being mentally sharp.”
As for the “mini driver head” for his 3-wood, as he called it, Mickelson said is allows him to control the ball much better without sacrificing distance.
“Because the fairways are so firm, if I hit it low enough, I’m able to get a lot of chase out of it,” he said. “So that allows me to kind of keep my misses a lot tighter. Today I hit it very successful, I hit a lot of good shots with it. My misses that I did miss weren’t as far offline and I was able to salvage pars.
“But that club has allowed me to kind of get it in play and then let my irons take over. My irons have always been the strength of my game, I just haven’t been able to use them enough. But that club’s working really well around here.”
Mickelson has done some really fine work around Quail Hollow despite not winning here. In 16 starts, he has 10 top-10s – eight of them top-5s – and signed for just 13 rounds over par in 65 played. His 64 Thursday fell one shot shy of his best score here – a 63 in the third round in 2014.
“The course has a great mixture of holes – great birdie opportunities and some really tough holes. That keeps my attention,” he said.
Dahmen played really well around Quail Hollow, too. Playing for the first time with Mickelson – Dahmen called it a bucket list item – he shot 68. Watching Mickelson play impressed him just as much if not more.
“Phil’s awesome. He’s a great guy,” Dahmen said. “He’s just so full of information, would be the way to put it. He’s got great stories. He’s really fun to play with. So I poked him a little bit and he played awesome today. It was incredible.
“We got in some dopamine talk, frontal lobe and dopamine, and then the units of it, which I was actually impressed with. Then he hit a 6‑iron to three feet, so he must have had his dopamine correct on that one.”
He had whatever was working correctly on a lot of iron shots.
“The iron play today was incredible,” Dahmen said. “I don’t know what the stats are going to show, but he hit so many great shots inside of what seemed like six feet, and obviously he can chip it and pitch it unbelievably, and he made all his putts today. He has this new 2‑wood thing. He was kind of hitting his dink cut, he was calling it, past my driver all day and that’s impressive.
“If he plays like this, he can play anywhere at any time against anybody.”
Rickie Fowler hasn’t competed on the PGA Tour since the first week of April. The extended break included a lot of golf.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – For a guy who hasn’t played on the PGA Tour since tying for 17th in the Valero Texas Open the first week of April, Rickie Fowler certainly has made a lot of noise in the golf world.
He missed the Masters for the first time since 2010, which ended a string of 41 consecutive major championships played. Word got out that he received a special exemption into the PGA Championship, which ruffled the feathers of a few critics in the game’s circles. He was predicted to be one of the beneficiaries of the PGA Tour’s controversial $40 million Player Impact Program which will reward 10 players not as much for their play inside the gallery ropes but for their influence outside the gallery ropes.
And earlier this week, Fowler was one of a handful of players reported to have received $30-$50 million offers to play in an aspiring golf league that would threaten the PGA Tour and European Tour.
As for Fowler, he just played a lot of golf on his extended break.
“I would say over the course of the month, I don’t think I took a video of any swings or anything like that,” Fowler said. “It was just more focused on go hit shots, go play golf, hit fairways, hit greens, make putts.
“A little bit more to like a little kid growing up.”
One would think his extended struggles have aged him. Fowler has dropped to 116th in the Official World Golf Rankings and he hasn’t won since the 2019 Waste Management Phoenix Open. He’s missed the cut 11 times in his last 27 starts and hasn’t had a top-10 since tying for 10th in the 2020 American Express.
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But the five-time winner on the PGA Tour and two-time winner on the European Tour looked upbeat as he shot a 1-under-par 70 in Thursday’s first round of the Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow.
He stood four shots out of the early lead set by K.H. Lee and Phil Mickelson (who was through 10 holes).
Fowler said his break was a reset as he tries to find his past form with a new swing.
“So coming off of that, felt good about a lot of things out there, felt like I left some shots out there. Unfortunate to give a couple away on the last two coming in,” he said. “Red numbers on Thursday are good. I’ve had some struggles getting off to decent starts over the last year or so. Step in a right direction, but still got some work to do. Happy about it. Go hit some balls and get ready for tomorrow.”
Fowler has kept a positive outlook during his struggles, which is his nature. He remains steadfast to the swing changes he’s made and continues to be confident better days are ahead.
“It’s just a fine line out here as far as what looks decent versus playing proper golf,” he said. “I know it’s close. I think some of it was spending a lot of time working on the swing, which needed to be done, but probably spent a little bit too long of a time focusing and worrying about certain things, and the last few months has just been going out and playing just a bit more golf instead of playing golf swing. It’s just converting some stuff the way I’ve been hitting and playing at home to bring it back on the road.”
As for the proposed league bankrolled by hundreds of millions of Saudi Arabian money that has rankled professional golf – PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan told players that if they join the rival circuit they would face immediate suspension and likely expulsion from the PGA Tour – Fowler said he’s just listening right now.
“It’s definitely interesting,” he said. “I think there’s a lot that needs to happen for it to even move forward of any sort, and at the same time I think competition can be a good thing. I do think that the PGA Tour is the premier place to be playing against the best players in the world.
“Could it get better? I’m sure this wouldn’t be coming up if someone didn’t think that there were ways that certain things could be better. So we’ll see. I think all of us will come out in a better place after all this is done.”
“I’m pretty honest with myself. There are times when I know I’m awful,” said Peter Malnati, who has fallen to No. 165 in the rankings.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Peter Malnati had missed eight consecutive cuts heading into the first round of the Wells Fargo Championship.
So of course he shot 4-under-par 67 on Thursday at Quail Hollow to get on the first page of the leaderboard.
Golf is goofy.
“I’m pretty honest with myself. There are times when I know I’m awful,” said Malnati, who has fallen to No. 165 in the official world golf rankings. “I’ve been way off for the last couple months frankly, but here in the last three or four weeks I’ve started to hit some really, really good shots. They’ve been flanked with awful ones and that’s why my scores stink, but the really, really good shots are there.
“You don’t hit good shots if you’re not doing something right. So to me, like trying to get back to playing good golf has been more about elimination than addition. The good is there, I’ve got to get rid of some of the bad. I don’t exactly know how to do that; if I did, I wouldn’t ever play bad, but I’m moving in the right direction right now and that’s fine.”
Malnati last saw a weekend of golf when he tied for 10th in the Farmers Insurance Open in January. Then he started slamming the truck and heading home after two rounds.
“I’ve had times Friday nights, just felt really awful. That’s just kind of the nature of this business, I think,” he said. “There are a few guys who are good enough that they can still make cuts even when they’re not playing well. I’m not in that category yet. Missed cuts are a part of the business. That’s not to say it’s easy, but I never woke Saturday morning and said I need to go find something new. I need to find a new philosophy, a new swing, a new anything.”
His swing worked just fine in the first round as he went around the tough track without a bogey. Malnati said it felt really nice to go around this difficult layout without getting out of position very often. Now he’s in position to make his second cut of the year as he chases his second PGA Tour title.
“No one made it to the PGA Tour by fluke or by accident. We made it out here because we did a lot of things right and played a lot of good golf. So there’s something innately good in what we did to get here, and I try to remember that even when I get in one of those down times,” he said. “And I wasn’t always good at that, by the way. I’ve panicked plenty of times over the years.
“I’ve had some Friday nights and Saturday mornings when I was just really bummed, really down this year. It stinks. But at the end of the day, I get to wake up every morning and I’m playing golf on the PGA Tour. That’s a dream come true. So my goodness, how bad can it be?”
Rickie Fowler: “It’s still pretty cool to get to go hang out and spend time with Tiger.”
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Rickie Fowler didn’t earn an invitation to the Masters this year, his prolonged struggles inside the ropes leading to his absence from Augusta National for the first time in 11 years.
But he didn’t miss the Masters altogether.
Fowler’s disappointment in missing his first major championship since the 2010 U.S. Open was tempered a bit when he watched the first round of the first major of the year with five-time Masters champion Tiger Woods, who was housebound in Florida recovering from multiple right leg injuries sustained in a single-car crash in the Los Angeles area in February.
“Between (the Masters) and the British Open, those are two tournaments that I love to watch. Typically I’m in them and I’m watching either the morning or afternoon wave when I’m not playing, so it was a little different in that sort being at home,” Fowler said Thursday after shooting a 1-under-par 70 in the first round of the Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow.
“I did go over and watch a little bit with Tiger, so it was fun to be able to do that, talk about the course. We were watching and saw just how firm and fast and kind of such a fine line how Augusta can be. We were definitely both very disappointed that we couldn’t be out there to experience it because it’s very few times where you do get to see Augusta that firm and fast.”
Fowler said Woods was in good spirits. Justin Thomas had been over to Woods’ palatial estate a few times and told Fowler that Woods was doing fine.
“He’s like, honestly, he was a lot better than I expected,” Fowler said. “So that was good to hear. Then to get over there and see him getting around, and now you guys have seen some pictures that he’s posted and he’s out and about a little bit, he was in good spirits. Because early on it was more him having to keep his leg up for inflammation, couldn’t be walking around on crutches that much, although I’m sure he wanted to because he didn’t want to just be laid up.
“It was good to see him. Hung out and spent some time with (Woods’ son) Charlie, and (daughter) Sam was there for a little bit before she had to go to soccer practice. I think his main focus and concern is getting back to being a dad, go play golf with Charlie, push him around, and be able to run around with Sam. But his golf clubs are right there in the living room and he can stare at them all he wants.”
Fowler values his friendship with Woods. Fowler grew up watching Woods dominate the game, especially in the 1997 Masters and then the early 2000s. He watched Woods win the 2008 U.S. Open on a broken leg. And so many more. And then Fowler started playing against Woods starting in 2009.
“Someone that we’ve all looked up to,” Fowler said. “Whether you’re younger, older, whatever, just to see what he was able to accomplish, especially through those early 2000s, even after coming back from different injuries, winning on a broken leg to coming back after a big layoff and winning the (2019) Masters. We all pull for him.
“Getting to be around him, be around him on a bit more of a personal level and getting to know him, especially over the last really five, six years, you know, we try and push him as hard as we can, but at the same time it’s still pretty cool to get to go hang out and spend time with Tiger.”
