Isle be back
Fowler returns to conquer famed 17th, Players for 2nd-straight year
PONTE VEDRA, Fla. — A year ago, Rickie Fowler came to the Players Championship a golfer scorned, with a chip on his shoulder the size of the 3, 192-square-foot green on the famous 17th at TPC Sawgrass.
On the eve of the most important tournament of the year outside of the four major championships, Fowler was the hot topic of a Sports Illustrated survey that anonymously polled PGA Tour players who voted him and Ian Poulter as the most overrated players in the game.
Fowler was viewed by many as more style than substance — an overmarketed player who hadn’t won enough to justify all the attention. Soo he did the only thing he could do to shut his critics up: He won.
And he did not just win. He came from six shots back with eight holes to play in the final round. He took just 11 strokes on the final four holes in regulation — the par-4 15th, par-5 16th, par-3 17th and par-4 18th — used 11 strokes for four holes that call for 16 strokes to play them in par.
That electrifying finish got Fowler into a playoff with Sergio Garcia and Kevin Kisner, against whom he twice birdied the 17th hole in the playoff to win — giv-ing him three birdies on the fabled island-green 17th in one day.
So now, Fowler comes to this week’s Players Championship as the defending champion trying to become the first to win two in a row in the 35-year history of the tournament.
He arrives with the recent baggage of failing to capitalize on having a one-shot lead entering the final round of the Wells Fargo Championship in Charlotte on Sunday. Fowler quickly faded from contention with bogeys on two of the f irst four holes and struggled throughout the f inal round, shooting 74.
“It’s always an emotional roller coaster,’’ Fowler said Tuesday after a practice round at Sawgrass. “One day you hit it perfect and the next day you can’t hit it on the map and maybe the day before you didn’t make any puts and you hit it perfect, yet that next day you make everything but you’re playing out of the trees all day.
“If it was an easy game there would be a lot more people competing at a high level. But I think it’s just like any other professional sport in a way — at the highest level it’s such a fine line between playing great golf and being just off. If winning is your only measure of success, it’s going to be a long road, just because you don’t win often. If youy looked at just winning tournaments was the only way to succeed, you’re going to be in the dumps all the time.’’
Fowler rarely portrays himself as a player who’s ever down in the dumps; he’s always upbeat in public. Even before last year’s Players, he showed no outward signs of being bothered by the magazine survey.
Fowler called winning the Players immediately after being ripped in the survey “just coin-cidence,” adding, “I can’t sit here and actually give credit to it. I mean, I laughed at the survey. Same as what Poulter did. It was obviously nice to win and take care of the survey. Shows you how credible they are. Yeah, it was fun. Whether you prove something wrong or just take care of business, it was good time.”
Fowler ’s win last year was his first PGA Tour title in three years. After his win in the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship on the European Tour in January, Fowler had four victories worldwide in less than a year, elevating his world ranking to No. 4 as a part of the “big four’’ along with Jason Day, Jordan Spieth and Rory McIlroy.
“It ’s def initely special to be back,’’ Fowler said of trying to defend his title this week. “It feels like coming back home.’’