DETROIT — Rickie Fowler’s winning putt on Sunday’s first playoff hole had great pace, but it seemed like it was taking forever to get there.
More than four years had passed since his last victory. That was in Phoenix in 2019, a win that came amid the 289 weeks that Fowler spent in the world top 25 from mid-2014 to January 2020. 4 in the winter of 2016. At the time, he was the frontman for the PGA Tour’s Young Talents, signing the kind of sponsorship deals that comes with being a rock star pro athlete.
Then the ride slowed. Or ended, depending on how you looked at it. From early 2021 to early 2023, Fowler spent 132 weeks outside of the world top 50. From top five finishes in all four majors in 2014, he achieved a top 20 finish in majors between 2019 and early 2023. A new crew of young stars, all taller, taller, stronger and longer than the 5’7, 150 pound Fowler, sped by. He was still one of the most well-known and popular players in golf – or any other sport, for that matter – but there were no successes. All this lucrative sponsorship started to seem absurd. Last summer, Rocket Mortgage, a longtime supporter, seriously considered letting his five-year contract with Fowler expire without renewal in March 2023, according to several people with knowledge of the matter. Other sponsors probably thought about it.
Since then a lot has happened. The organizers of the Rocket Mortgage Classic were knocking on the door Sunday, desperate for Fowler to win their signature event.
For some inexplicable reason, Fowler’s support never faltered much throughout. Fans love Fowler. They cry out for him, idolize him. You dress like him. Why? It’s not entirely clear. It can’t just be because Fowler is marketable, handsome, or interesting. Or because he was an intriguing young talent a decade ago. Or because he always signs an autograph, no matter what. There is more at play here.
So why? On Sunday, as Fowler, a 34-year-old with zero major wins on his resume, walked toward the 18th green at Detroit Golf Club, why did a vast, rain-soaked gallery call his name? Why were fans ignoring Collin Morikawa, a 26-year-old with dual majors and an exceedingly bright future? Why did they ignore Adam Hadwin, a likable Canadian who went viral for a few weeks when he was attacked by a security guard?
Why did everyone in Detroit and everywhere else want Rickie to win?
That’s because there’s something about him.
Something about Fowler that feels authentic despite the publicity, the money, and the fame.
The Murrieta Valley Golf Range, about 90 minutes south of Los Angeles, was open Sunday from 7 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Golfers of all shapes and sizes have come and gone, just as they do. They dropped big buckets and hacked away. Ninety balls still cost $12 in the Murrieta Valley. It doesn’t get much better, especially with fifty stands with natural grass pitches and a short-game area.
The range began in 1992 when Bill Teasdall, a former Mini Tour pro with PGA Tour dreams, partnered with Barry McDonnell, a teaching pro. Bill found the land, leased the 15 acre lot and built the pasture facility. This included a teaching stand for Barry. Bill owned Murrieta Valley but considered Barry a “partner”. In fact, Barry didn’t want to be involved in the business side of the company, but Bill wanted him to own it too.
“It was just as much his dream as mine,” Bill says all along later.
Barry was a third generation club pro. He learned the game from his Scottish grandfather. He viewed the golf swing as a product of the individual. He told The Golf Channel in 2009: “I have a lot of kids that I work with and I don’t try to make them all look the same. Golf is more of an art form than a science.”
Barry was old-fashioned. He took Mondays off. He started each day with a cup of coffee at the golf shop. He gave at most four lessons a day. Often the lessons consisted of Barry talking to the students about life. The golf swing was secondary. Barry was, says Bill, “a philosopher.” He didn’t answer the phone. He didn’t reply to messages. If anyone wanted lessons, the best way was to practice with Murrieta and work on their game.
“Eventually,” says Bill, “Barry would walk by and show interest. Then class would begin.”
It wasn’t long before construction was complete at Murrieta when Barry shared his dream with Bill.
“He says to me, he says, ‘You know, Bill, I’ve worked with young people, I’ve been to tour school with guys and I know what it takes to get through tour school. All I need now is a young lad with some talent and I will accompany him all the way there.”
That was in October 1992.
In December 1992, three-year-old Rickie Fowler entered the Murrieta Valley Golf Range with his grandfather. Young Rickie hit a bucket. Then he came back the next day and hit another bucket. Then his parents asked if there were classes on the premises. You’ve signed on to one of the series’ pros, Mark Quinlan. He tutored Rickie for about a year before moving on.
Barry took over.
A year or two later, Barry took Bill aside. He said, “This kid is it.”
“And I said, my god, Barry, he’s only 8!” Bill says.
By the time he was 12, Rickie had already passed the 70 mark. Junior trophies piled up. When he was 14, Barry set out to work on his brain instead of Rickie’s game. He wanted his young prodigy to be unshakable. Day after day, they met at Barry’s teaching booth and set to work. A wall in the pro shop was dedicated to Fowler’s amateur performances.
Over time, the child grew up. Rickie went to Oklahoma State, but the bond with Barry endured. When Fowler was going through a rough patch early in his college career, OSU coach Mike McGraw asked Barry and Bill to come to Stillwater. Barry didn’t particularly enjoy the hassle of flying and traveling, but Bill persuaded him by simply saying, “This is Rick.” When they arrived, Bill sat and spent time with McGraw so Barry could be alone with Rickie.
McGraw watched in fascination from afar. He turned to Bill and in a low voice asked what Barry wanted to work on with Rick. Bill looked back at McGraw and shook his head.
“Few.”
Barry did his thing. He spoke to Rickie. He asked how he was doing. He pointed it out, drew attention to it. They spent a few hours together.
Then Fowler went out and won a tournament the next week.
At this point, Barry was well over 70 years old. Bill asked him one day when Fowler was at school, “If you’re not around later, what’s going to happen to Rick?” Barry had a quick answer. Anyway, Rickie should be working with the famous teaching pro Butch Harmon.
“Butch won’t change him,” Barry said to Bill.
Not long after, on May 24, 2011, Barry McDonnell died of a heart attack. He lived long enough to see Fowler named 2010 PGA Tour Rookie of the Year and US Ryder Cup Captain’s Pick.
When it comes to the Murrieta Valley Golf Range, time has moved on. Different kids. Various professionals. bucket on grass. At one end of the row is a giant California pepper tree, not far from where young Rickie learned his swing. Barry planted it shortly after the course opened to provide some shade. The Schinus molle is known to grow up to five stories tall and has a deep, extensive root system. The one in the Murrieta Valley is now known as “Barry’s Tree”.
(Courtesy of Murrieta Valley Golf Range)
So this is where Rickie Fowler’s swing was born. But what is a golf swing? It’s a contradiction. It’s your own work. And it is the body at work. It’s inherent. And it’s learned.
Fowler’s swing is all alone, but also a product of chance. This Bill built his range in Murrieta. That Barry was there to mold the swing set for a five year old. In 2011, after Barry’s death, Fowler said, “I think of him almost every day or every day that I’m on the golf course just because I have so many life and golf lessons in my head from him.” He’s been the biggest influence in my life outside of immediate friends and family.”
Rickie eventually followed Barry’s advice. In 2014 he linked up with Butch Harmon. When Fowler was back in the Murrieta Valley soon after, Bill sat and watched him hit a few balls. Then he asked the inevitable question.
How’s it going with Butch?
“I really like him,” Fowler said to Bill. “He’s just like Barry. He doesn’t say much.”
But despite the success, Fowler left Harmon in 2019. Then came “the fights,” as Rickie calls them. Fowler only had two top 10 finishes combined in 2020 and 2021 while missing 15 cuts. At home, he and wife Allison Stokke gave birth to their first child in November 2021, but on the pitch he felt alienated from his game.
“You don’t really understand it or don’t understand it until you’ve actually been able to,” Fowler says now. “You feel the outside, be it the support or the other side. When you go through fights, you hear both sides of it. It’s amazing that I have so much fan base and that the people who have always been by my side and stood up for me have supported me. But you also deal with the other side.”
Something had to change and in the 2022 offseason, Fowler parted ways with longtime caddie Joe Skovron and replaced him with Ricky Romano, a childhood friend from Murrieta.
Then he hired Harmon again.
Initially, their work was mostly done via video, with Butch getting clips of it and sending along tweaks. He changed the level of Fowler’s arm. He opted for more hip rotation. And further. Soon Rickie Fowler started looking like Rickie Fowler again.
After Fowler failed to qualify for the Masters last April, Harmon said on a podcast with his son Claude Harmon, “I guarantee you he’s going to win this year – he’s playing that well.” He has tremendous confidence again. His game is there.”
Three months later in Detroit, Fowler had a putt and had a chance to prove Butch right.
And Barry too.
Sometime during the 2006-07 school year, when Rickie Fowler was playing in a high school tournament, his mother, Lynn, was walking down a fairway with Bill Teasdall. She revealed the grand plan.
“You know,” Lynn said to Bill, “Rickie told me he’s going to be a successful touring pro, make millions, and then come back to Murrieta and buy the range from you.”
While it sounded like a great retirement plan, Bill hadn’t really backed it. Rickie was a teenager.
But 15 years later…
“I’ll be damned, Rick won the Players Championship and I get a call from his agent telling me that Rick will buy this house whenever I’m ready to retire,” says Bill.
That was 2015. Bill wasn’t quite ready. So he stuck with Murrieta Valley, checking in every day and continuing to stock the pro shop. By 2019 it was ready for sale, but then the pandemic struck and plans were put on hold.
But then came last fall. Rickie, 34, and Bill, 74, made it official.
Fowler bought his old driving range in November. The sale was completed in January.
“It’s a special place and I’m not going to change it,” Fowler says now. “We will upgrade things, improve things, but for the children of today it will be the same place as it was for me.”
Fowler has hired KemperSports, a golf hospitality management company, for day-to-day administration, but otherwise leaves the staff exactly as it was. Bill is only half retired and still kicking around. Lisa D’Hondt has been a front desk clerk for nearly 30 years and recalls the time Rickie “was five feet tall and was waving and beating his dad’s driver.” She can have the job as long as she wants it. When asked what was different about having Rickie Fowler as her boss, she scoffed.
“Nothing, and I think that’s the point,” D’Hondt said. “He doesn’t really want a change.”
When Murrieta Valley comes into the conversation, Fowler goes from tour pro to general manager. The place has a few things that are required for programming, he explains. A few handicap accessible spots here and there. He has to raise the net to protect some adjacent houses. There are plans to revamp the tee line this summer. He recently auctioned off a lot from the city on the corner of the firing range and plans to move there and expand the short game.
“We will invest to ensure it reaches its full potential,” says Fowler. “But it is. I still want it to be the range I grew up in.”
Fowler’s purchase of Murrieta Valley mostly stayed under the radar. On purpose. He doesn’t want a lot of credit. “Rick’s always been like that,” says Romano. “He’s been like this since we were kids. He was always kind of a flatliner.”
It’s not hard to figure out where he might have gotten that from.
“Barry was reticent,” says Bill Teasdall. “He didn’t want awards. But the truth is he made Rickie Fowler.”
Fowler never forgets it. Never. Years ago he tattooed Barry McDonnell’s signature on the inside of his left wrist. Now he’s bought a whole damn driving range to keep intact the most tangible part of his life in this game. He did what anyone who hit balls at the gun range as a kid imagines he would someday do. In a world that has made him one of the most recognizable characters in this game, he has preserved the place where he is himself.
This is as real as it gets.
When Fowler’s last putt came Sunday, earning him a Rocket Mortgage Classic win, fans roaring their silent silence and media something to hold on to, old Rickie put both hands up on the racquet and kind of…paused. He looked up as if trying to memorize the sky. The moment was his.
A man who remembers where he’s been.
(Top Photo: Cliff Hawkins/Getty Images)