Fowler bested Collin Morikawa and Adam Hadwin in a playoff for his first win since the 2019 Phoenix Open
Rickie Fowler was back at some point earlier this season. Possibly after the Zozo Championship in October, where he finished T2. Maybe it was after the Phoenix Open in February, when he finished T10 following a mediocre final day. Or perhaps it was when he led the U.S. Open after 54 holes just two weeks ago at Los Angeles Country Club.
"Rickie's back" became official on Sunday, however, when he won the Rocket Mortgage Classic in a playoff over Collin Morikawa and Adam Hadwin with a birdie on the first hole of bonus play.
Getting there was a grind, both metaphorically through the last four years of not winning PGA Tour events, and literally; Fowler looked to be kicking away this tournament late in the day after he was the heavy favorite going into the final round.
Following a great start to his day, Fowler stalled over the last few hours of his round, making par on 10 straight holes going to the 72nd. On a day when Morikawa shot 64 and Hadwin had jumped past him, Fowler had to birdie the last hole just to get into the playoff. He got it with one of the more clutch shots you'll ever see a professional hit.
Then in the playoff, after a flared drive way out to the right, Fowler once again fired at the pin.
He left himself 12 feet for his first win since February 2019 when he took the Phoenix Open, and he made sure there wouldn't be a 74th hole of the day.
"It's hard to put it all into words," Fowler told CBS Sports' Amanda Renner. "Obviously, a lot of good stuff this year. I've been playing some really good golf. I knew it was just a matter of time with how I've been playing. I've had a couple of tough weekends where I've had a chance ... but at the end of the day getting to hang with Maya and my wife, winning is great but there's a lot more to life than that."
Fowler famously fell outside the top 170 in the world over the last few years and even seemed to flirt with the idea of playing in the LIV Golf league this time 14 months ago. Instead, he doubled down on his swing, returned to old coach, Butch Harmon, and put in the work he needed to become a top-30 golfer in the world once again.
"After a while, Rickie started coming out to Vegas to see me," Harmon told Golf Digest earlier this year, "and we could both see the path back -- even better than before. Golf is a cruel game, and sometimes those bad times, if you can get through them, really help you going forward."
No, the reward for Fowler at the summit of this mountain is not hundreds of millions of dollars, but it is the gratification that comes with once again excelling in your craft. The U.S. Ryder Cup team, which Fowler will almost certainly be a part of now, is not a bad parting gift, either.
What's not being discussed is how much is still at stake this season for the now six-time PGA Tour winner. The Open at Royal Liverpool in three weeks is where Fowler almost won in 2014 over Rory McIlroy, and the FedEx Cup Playoffs loom beyond that. Fowler could still accomplish plenty over the rest of 2023, but make no mistake about what the Rocket Mortgage Classic marked on this Sunday in Detroit. Rickie Fowler is now officially officially back and likely not going anywhere anytime soon. Grade: A+
Below are other grades following the 2023 Rocket Mortgage Challenge:
T2.Collin Morikawa (-24): I said on Saturday that I didn't really care what happened on Sunday, and that remained true even as Morikawa tried to fight his way to the top of the board. This was the type of week everyone has come to expect from Morikawa — amazing from tee to green, and if the putts fall, he's going to win the golf tournament (which he nearly did on Sunday). It's also a bit different than what's been going on with him recently. In three of his previous six starts coming into this week, he had lost strokes either off the tee or (gasp!) with his iron play. This week portends for what could be a strong closing kick to the summer for somebody who has not fallen off quite as much as everyone thinks. Grade: A-
T40. Ludvig Aberg (-11): My biggest takeaway from Aberg's nice week is what European Ryder Cup captain Luke Donald, who played with Aberg on Thursday and Friday, said about him before the third round.
"He [Donald] told me there have only been a few [players] that he's played with for the very first time that have the 'wow' factor," relayed Nick Dougherty of Golf Channel. "One of them is Rory. That was back in 2008 at the Dunhill Links.
"Now he says Ludvig Aberg is one of those guys as well," Dougherty continued. "He said his driver is a huge weapon, he makes the game look effortless. He added that as long as he continues to show form, he will definitely be considered for the [Ryder Cup] team. ... This guy is going to be a superstar."
Aberg is a total menace with driver in hand— he finished third in the field in strokes-gained off the tee — and is going to be a force. His double-bogey-bogey run late on Saturday took him completely out of the golf tournament, but it was the 65-67 start that has folks buying stock (a lot of it) in what seems like an extremely bright future. Grade: A+
MC. Justin Thomas (+1): It's been a no good, very strange year for the two-time major champion. After a few months of struggle, he seemed to turn the corner last week at the Travelers Championship when he got in the mix on the weekend. However, a 76 in Round 1 at Detroit Golf Club paved the way for his third missed cut in his last four PGA Tour starts.
Clearly, he's struggling. Whether that struggle is simply physical or mental (or both) remains to be seen. And though the near future — the Open Championship, FedEx Cup Playoffs and Ryder Cup — do not bring about optimism that J.T. can apply a quick fix to whatever besets him at the moment, he remains undeterred in his quest to once again become the best player int he world.
"Definitely saw a lot of great signs last week and played some really, really good golf those last three days," he said earlier in the week. "I'm just a couple events away from being right there. And a lot of things can happen. The unknown is the fun and bad part about this game, so we'll see where it takes us."
What is true, however, is the old adage that nearly every player who has played at the level J.T. has played at has uttered at some point in their careers: Nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems. Grade: F
MC. Tony Finau (-1): The potential U.S. Ryder Cup team did not have the greatest week in Detroit. Since winning Mexico earlier in the year, Finau has more missed cuts (2) than top 25s (1). This is a curiosity that can probably be attributed to the ebbs and flows of professional golf. Unlike J.T., Finau has not dropped off the planet from a statistical standpoint. In fact, he's having one of the best seasons of his career from a strokes-gained perspective.
It was a fun return for the 2022 champion to Detroit — replete with a bobblehead, menu item and meeting with Chris Webber — but unfortunately it ended much (much) earlier this time around for Finau than it did when he touched off back-to-back wins a little under a year ago at this tournament. Grade: F
New Englander Keegan Bradley wins Travelers Championship, breaks tourney record
CROMWELL, Conn — Keegan Bradley built a big enough lead in front of adoring New England fans that he broke the tournament record at the Travelers Championship despite a shaky closing stretch, closing with a 2-under 68 for a three-shot victory on Sunday.
Bradley, who went 62-63-64 in the first three rounds, finished at 23-under 257 at TPC River Highlands, a shot better than Kenny Perry’s previous record from 2009.
With fans chanting his name, the 37-year-old walked up to his ball on the 18th green, sank a 2-foot par putt and threw his arms into the air and let out a yell. He finished three shots ahead of Zac Blair, who shot 62, and Brian Harman, who closed with a 64.
“This is for all the kids who grew up in New England and had to endure the winters and watch other people play golf,” said Bradley, who was born in Vermont and also lived in Massachusetts. “I am just so proud to win this tournament.”
Bradley had only made one bogey for the week before dropping three shots in his final six holes as the nerves seemed to get to him at the PGA Tour even he said he most wanted to win. This was his sixth Tour victory and second this season; he won the Zozo Championship in Japan in October.
Bradley birdied the par-4 12th hole to move for 5 under for the day and take a six-shot lead. But he sliced his tee shot into the water on the next hole, leading to bogey. He also bogeyed the 14th and 16th holes.
He settled down with a par on the 17th to all but guarantee himself a triumphant walk up the last hole.
“I played great until the last like five or six holes and luckily I had a big enough lead to coast home,” Bradley said.
He became the first New Englander to win the title since Connecticut’s J.J. Henry in 2006.
Blair had his best finish on Tour. The 32-year-old from Utah has been playing on a major medical exemption after missing almost two full years with a torn labrum.
“Basically, I went from playing 18 or 36 holes every day for the last seven, eight years to not touching a club for five, six, seven months,” he said. “It was cool, though. Got to hang out with my family and build a golf course and do a lot of other fun stuff. But, it’s obviously cooler to shoot 62 on Sunday.”
Blair had back-to-back bogeys on Nos. 4 and 5, then went on a tear with six birdies and an eagle on the par-5 13th, where he hit his approach from 253 yards inside 5 feet.
Harman shot his second straight 64.
Patrick Cantlay, who shot 61 on Saturday to get within five strokes of the leaders, made a run at Bradley with three straight birdies from Nos. 13-15. But he overshot the 16th green, leading to bogey, and lipped out his birdie try on the 17th. He shot 67 to finish four shots back alongside Scottie Scheffler (65) and 2019 champion Chez Reavie (71), who began the day one shot behind Bradley but did not make a birdie until the 14th hole.
Rory McIlroy shot 64 and finished at 18 under after making an early charge. He birdied five of his first seven holes in front of galleries that were four or five fans deep.
But he gave a shot back on the ninth after his 352-yard drive settled next to a boundary fence in deep rough. He then missed an 8-foot birdie putt on No. 12.
TPC River Highlands gave up eight rounds of 62 or better this week.
“I don’t particularly like when a tournament is like this,” McIlroy said. “Unfortunately, technology has passed this course by, right? It sort of has made it obsolete, especially as soft as it has been with a little bit of rain that we had.”
2023 U.S. Open leaderboard: Wyndham Clark breaks through edging Rory McIlroy for first major championship
With Rickie Fowler, Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler atop the 2023 U.S. Open leaderboard, it appeared as if Los Angeles Country Club was set to crown a shining star as its national champion. Instead, the City of Angels saw a breakout performance from perhaps one of the game's rising stars as 29-year-old Wyndham Clark (-10) outlasted the veteran McIlroy (-9) to capture his first major championship and clinch his second professional victory.
Clark, whose only other PGA Tour win came last month at the Wells Fargo Championship, had not finished better than T75 at six major appearances since 2020; in four of those six majors, he did not even make it to the weekend.
This week in L.A., though? He was phenomenal. Clark posted one of the low scores of the tournament with a 64 in Round 1 and entered the final day as co-leader alongside Rickie Fowler. Their 54-hole score of 200 was the second-lowest in U.S. Open history behind McIlroy's 199 at the 2011 event he won.
Clark immediately seized control of the championship with an opening birdie in the final round. A sense of comfort appeared to wash over him as quality shot after quality shot ricocheted off the center of his club face.
With McIlroy remaining steady in the group ahead and playing partner Fowler falling off pace, Clark built his lead with birdies on the difficult par-3 4th and drivable par-4 6th. While the par-breakers provided relief and extended Clark's lead to two, it was a bogey save on the par-5 8th that set off a chain of big-time shots required to be hit by major champions.
Dropping a stroke on the easiest hole on the course when a double bogey felt certain, Clark and his scrambling ability began to shine through. A near-impossible up and down on the par-3 9th was followed with another two holes later on the downhill 11th.
"U.S. Opens are tough, and unfortunately, I had a bad lie at 8," Clark said. "Honestly, that up and down for bogey was probably the key of the tournament, kept me in it, and then the up and down on 9 was huge."
McIlroy continued to pepper fairways and greens applying as much pressure as possible from tee to green, but his inability to cash in with the putter was once again his downfall. The four-time major champion hit 59 greens in total on the week, the highest amount by a non-winner in U.S. Open history.
"It was hard to get the ball really close all day," McIlroy said. "It was [the putter] and just that wedge shot on 14 coming up a little bit. short. Those are the couple things I'll rue today. I hung in there. I fought right to the end. Didn't quite get the job done, but as I said [Saturday], I'm going to keep coming back until I get another one."
Ultimately, it was that missed green on the par-5 14th that proved the costliest for McIlroy. Facing one of the rare scoring opportunities on the difficult back side of LACC, Rory flared his wedge short of the putting surface. Unable to salvage par, the 34-year-old dropped to 9 under as Clark looked on from the middle of the fairway.
Clark saw his opening, threw one hand on the trophy and secured it out of McIlroy's fleeting grasp. From 281 yards, Clark sizzled a fairway wood through the mouth of the green as McIlroy stood nearby on from the 15th tee. Settling just 20 feet away from the pin, Clark's two-putt birdie ultimately gave him enough breathing room for a sweaty four-hole stretch to close.
"It's tough, on the back nine, trying to win a tournament," said Clark. "I felt at ease and I just kept saying, 'Alright, I can do this. I can do this.' The shot on 14 was kind of the shot of the week for me -- to make a birdie there and grind it on the way in."
Bogeys followed Clark's heroics on the 14th as he became the only man all day to drop a shot on the short par-3 15th. His lead was trimmed to two, and another bogey on the 16th left his margin at one. He continued to fight his golf swing, but as he did throughout the day, he summoned a clutch short game when called upon. Clark hit a nifty spinner from left of the green on the 71st to tap-in distance.
A hit fairway and a green in regulation on the 18th (his first since the 14th) left Clark a stroll to remember up the 72nd hole. When he successfully two-putted from 60 feet, Clark looked up to the sky, hugged his caddie and buried his face into his cap knowing he had just joined golf's most elite company in the city where stars are born.
Rick Gehman, Greg DuCharme, Kyle Porter and Patrick McDonald break down a tough test as Wyndham Clark claimed the U.S. Open on Sunday. Follow & listen to The First Cut on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Let's take a look at the rest of the leaderboard from the 2023 U.S. Open. Check out our full breakdown of the 2023 U.S. Open purse and prize money allotments.
2. Rory McIlroy (-9): Rory had the golf ball on a string from tee to green, but like The Open at St. Andrews last year, he just could not get enough putts to fall. After making birdie on No. 1 to momentarily pull even with the leaders, McIlroy was unable to take advantage of the short par-4 6th before leaving one on the table on the par-5 8th when his birdie putt from less than four feet failed to even touch the hole.
He continued to apply pressure on Clark with a heavy diet of fairways and greens, but McIlroy and his inability to hole putts made the margin thinner than usual. He ranked 58th out of 65 players in strokes gained putting Sunday. This became apparent when he made his lone bogey of the round on 14 and dropped three off Clark. It was ultimately one too many to overcome as McIlroy finished on the podium for the third time in his last seven majors. He now has 19 top-10 finishes since his last major championship nine years ago.
"When I do finally win this next major, it's going to be really, really sweet," said McIlroy. "I would go through 100 Sundays like this to get my hands on another major championship."
3. Scottie Scheffler (-7): The world No. 1 was in the mix in a major championship late into Sunday yet again. Similar to Saturday, Scheffler endured a stop-and-go round with three birdies offset by three bogeys. He continues his rapid streak of top-12 finishes with 17 in a row and now has top-10 finishes in all three majors with the last two resulting in podium finishes. "I just felt like I wasn't sharp enough today to move up the board," said Scheffler. "I did a good job of keeping myself in it but I just wasn't sharp enough."
4. Cameron Smith (-6): He kind of snuck his way up the leaderboard and flashed the type of form that resulted in a career season in 2022. After a slow start to his year, he now has six straight top-10 finishes including a T9 at the PGA Championships and a solo fourth at the U.S. Open. The Champion Golfer of the Year now goes to defend the Claret Jug at Hoylake where he will relish the opportunity to put his creativity and imagination on display again.
T5. Rickie Fowler, Min Woo Lee, Tommy Fleetwood (-5): This one will hurt for Fowler as it marked his best opportunity to date to win a major championship. He opened the floodgates with a record-setting amount of birdies, but the mistakes ultimately proved to too much. The poor finish on Saturday seeped into Sunday and a round of 75 was the result. Fowler's resurgence remains real, and this run at contention may very well propel Fowler, 34, into a strong second stage of his career. "I was just really excited on how I felt this week, how comfortable I felt to go out and back up my first round and continue to play well," Fowler said. "I enjoyed it. You learn from all your experiences. Not the position I wanted to be in after today, but a lot of good coming from this week."
T8. Tom Kim, Harris English (-4): Kim shot the round of the day with a 66 on Saturday, and he was one of just 16 golfers to shoot under par Sunday. If not for opening with a 3-over 73, he may have been able to make a play for this tournament.
T10. Xander Schauffele, Jon Rahm, Dustin Johnson, Austin Eckroat (-3): Another major goes by with Schauffele unable to seal the deal. The world No. 6 fired out the gates with a record 62 alongside Fowler but slowly drifted down the leaderboard as the week progressed. He shot 5 over across the two weekend rounds. Schauffele now has top-15 finishes in all seven of his U.S. Open appearances and six straight top 20s in major championships.
