Rickie Fowler’s off-season of reinvention

NAPA, Calif. – Rickie Fowler was standing amongst the caddies at Silverado Resort & Spa and indulging a reporter on Tuesday when a small, black kitten caught his attention.

Fowler held up his phone, aimed it at the kitten.

“I’ll take a picture for Allison,” he said as he prepared to play a practice round for this week’s season-opening Fortinet Championship. “We have two cats at home. They’re easy for travel. They take care of themselves.”

It could be argued that all golfers, at least the successful ones, have nine lives. Slumps come and go. Equipment outlives its usefulness. Caddie partnerships go oddly stale.

All 28 members of the PGA TOUR rookie class are scheduled to compete at the Fortinet, and among them five (Trevor Cone, Nicolas Echavarria, Harrison Endycott, Vincent Norrman, Kevin Roy) will be making their first-ever TOUR start.

Then there’s Fowler, 33, who will be starting over in an effort to break out of a mid-career slump that has seen him drop to 176th in the world. He’ll have a new caddie this week, friend and veteran TOUR caddie Ricky Romano, and the Fortinet will be his first tournament since going back to swing coach Butch Harmon after a three-year stint with John Tillery.

“I love Tillery,” said Fowler, who missed the FedExCup Playoffs for the first time in his career in 2021 and failed to advance past the FedEx St. Jude Championship last month. “I can’t say a bad thing about him; I had to put the personal side away and just look at what’s best for me in the business of golf. We gave it all we had for three years.

“There was almost too much of a language barrier, in a way,” he added.

In going back to Harmon, Fowler is seeking comfort in the familiar. The two were together for a five-plus-year stretch that saw Fowler hit fourth in the Official World Golf Ranking and win the 2015 PLAYERS Championship, one of his five TOUR wins.

Limited to texts and phone calls so far, they’ll likely reunite in person in Las Vegas, where Harmon is based, the Monday of the Shriners Children’s Open in early October. Fowler knows what he’s supposed to be working on – a steeper left-arm plane, hands higher at the top – and like many players sometimes finds himself working on things in odd places.

The weekend of the BMW Championship last month, he, his wife, Allison, and their daughter, Maya, went to Baker’s Bay Golf & Ocean Club in the Bahamas for some R and R. Fowler left his clubs at home, but that didn’t keep him from playing.

“I hit some and played a few holes with a rental set,” he said. “I wanted to make some swings. Just played with whatever they had. The driver shaft wasn’t anything great, so I just played with the irons. One of the days I played like 12 holes with one of the assistant pros down there, a kid that I know through Discovery.

“It was nice to get away, have some fun, and work on a couple of swing things.”

Fowler paused, sipping from a Presidents Cup water bottle, a reminder that while he has been a member of the U.S. Presidents Cup Team three times, next week’s event will go on without him. (He was also on four U.S. Ryder Cup Teams.)

There were glimpses of progress under Tillery, but in a way that added to the frustration. Fowler finished T3 at THE CJ CUP @ SUMMIT last season, but that was 11 months ago and was his only top-10 finish. He made just 13 cuts in 22 starts.

The last man into the FedEx St. Jude Championship last month, Fowler showed up with a new, albeit temporary caddie. Fowler and his longtime caddie, Joe Skovron, a friend from back home in Murrieta, California, had agreed to split.

“It wasn’t what either of us wanted,” Fowler said.

He opened with a 65 at TPC Southwind but finished T64. He and Tiger Woods jetted up from South Florida to attend an early-week player meeting at the BMW, after which Fowler and family went to the Bahamas. It was while he was on vacation that he began to contemplate a longer-term caddie replacement.

“I waited a couple weeks because I didn’t really want to think about it,” Fowler said. “Took some vacation, and thought, Do I want someone who’s a friend? Do I want it to be full business? For me I’ve always wanted to have fun. Rick is someone I’ve known a long time, he was a very good player, and I just felt like it was a good fit to try this fall.”

The Rickie/Ricky combo will play their first round at Silverado on Thursday, when Fowler will be paired with Joel Dahmen and Harris English. “We’re still a work in progress,” Fowler said. “We’re accepting or looking at any nickname.”

Whether or not the new partnership bears fruit will have a lot to do with Fowler’s ability to put the ball in the hole. His Strokes Gained: Putting ranking plummeted in lockstep with his world ranking, but he saw encouraging signs in Memphis. It’s still in there, somewhere, and players like Ben Hogan and Tom Watson didn’t find their absolute top gears until reaching their 30s.

“I feel like I’m in a really good spot,” Fowler said. “I’m arguably as healthy and strong as I’ve ever been. The home life couldn’t be better. The little one is great.”

Asked about his goals, he added: “Get back to having fun and being in contention. Over the last few years, I wasn’t really in a position to be in contention a whole lot. There were a couple times, but there shouldn’t be such big gaps between having a chance to win. I want to go out and beat guys.”

Fowler is determined to prove he is still the same guy who won the PLAYERS in 2015, and made the TOUR Championship as recently as 2019. It’s still in there; he’s just got to find it.