Rickie Fowler stepped in front of the PGA Tour's cameras as the season opened in early January at The Sentry. He was asked a simple question: What word would you use to define your 2024? The fan favorite wrote "validate" on the whiteboard given he was coming off a resurgent 2023 season that included contention in major championships, Ryder Cup participation and a return to the winner's circle after four long years.
"'Validate' because, coming off of some tough years and then having a pretty solid last year, I want to keep that going," Fowler said in Kapalua. "So, it's like getting a skin. Sometimes, you're playing with buddies, you got to validate the next hole. So, this year's the next hole, and we got to validate."
Fast forward to this week as Fowler returns to the Rocket Mortgage Classic where he serves as the reigning champion still looking to validate that success from a season ago. Coming into the week as the lowest-ranked player in the FedEx Cup standings among those who qualified for this year's signature events (No. 91), the six-time PGA Tour winner is in need of a sizzling summer stretch if he hopes to be part of those fields again in 2025.
"Working on basically a lot of the same things and basically still trying to do the same thing as how to control the golf ball, hit it the right distance and hit it as close as possible," Fowler said of his recent focus. "Done some golf ball testing throughout the end of last year into this year. Not saying that's a part of it or anything. You're seeing it throughout the bag where things haven't been as good. I think a big part of freeing myself up and allowing myself to play better golf starts on the greens and helps when I'm making putts, which last week started to see that.
"Not that ball striking was good by any means, but I feel like when I'm putting at least up to my standards or at least average, it kind of frees up the rest of the game. So, looking forward to hopefully leaning on the putter a little bit more going forward and allowing the others to kind of fall into place and see the ball-striking stats come back up."
Fowler's dip in quality did not necessarily begin right as the calendar turned but rather after he raised the crown at last year's Rocket Mortgage Classic. Fowler finished his year on a low note with only one top 20 (Tour Championship) in his last six starts and a forgettable Ryder Cup appearance that included an 0-2-0 record and Fowler yielding the winning point to the European side in Sunday singles.
This season, the American has notched just two top-20 finishes -- both came in 70-player fields, including last week's Travelers Championship -- and become an afterthought over the weekends.
Like Fowler said, the ball striking is the primary concern ... but his concerns extend beyond that.
For the first time in his long career, the 35-year-old is losing strokes off the tee. After putting together the best approach season of his PGA Tour tenure in 2023, he has regressed to averaging +0.00 strokes per round with his irons. And while his chipping and pitching remain sound, Fowler's putting does not as he ranks 113th on the PGA Tour in that category.
Some of Fowler's recent years have been bleak -- in both 2021 and 2022, he had only one top-10 finish -- and 2024 is certainly looking closer to those efforts than his resurgent 2023 campaign.
The good news for Fowler? He still has time to change course, and this week at Detroit Golf Club would be as good a time as ever to start.
"It's a fun course to play and especially having good memories and coming off the win last year," Fowler said. "We'll see if we can kind of reignite some stuff from then and get past the little bit of a slow year it's been and just go have some fun this week."
