{FrEE>>}-Rickie Fowler has fame, fortune … now he needs a major Live

{LiVE>>}-Rickie Fowler has fame, fortune … now he needs a major Live

Rickie Fowler has fame, fortune … now he needs a major

Live Goll::::::https://bit.ly/2y6uOJB [1]

Live Goll::::::https://bit.ly/2y6uOJB [1]

12 Jun, 2018

Ian O’ConnorESPN Senior Writer

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AP Photo/David Goldman

The first time Barry McDonnell identified Rickie Fowler as special, as a future big leaguer, the 8-year-old was not even known as Rickie. They called him Rick back then at the Murrieta Valley Golf Range, where it was clear the boy had a gift that would take him places most kids couldn’t fathom while plowing through buckets of scuffed-up balls.

The grandson of a Scottish golf pro, McDonnell didn’t bother fixing the flaws in Fowler’s swing in their sessions under the teacher’s favorite shade tree. McDonnell didn’t want to bog down Fowler with information, or in any way impede the natural talent the boy regularly flashed on this modest training ground wedged between Los Angeles and San Diego. This was about art, not science.
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“I’m going to build a great golfing mind for this kid,” McDonnell told his best friend, Bill Teasdall, the owner of the range. “When Rick is 25, they will talk about his golfing mind, and he won’t even know where it came from.” Years later, when Fowler explained his tee-to-green creativity as a function of his love for motorbikes and the midair stunts he once performed on them, McDonnell and Teasdall shot each other a look and shared a private laugh. It was happening. With a visionary’s feel for the game, Fowler had developed into a can’t-miss prospect. Just after he won the tour’s Rookie of the Year award in 2010, McDonnell and Teasdall were talking about his future over lunch. McDonnell had been in poor health, and he confided in his friend that he didn’t believe he would live much longer.

“Don’t you want to stick around and see what happens to Rick?” Teasdall asked him. “This could be a lot of fun for you and me. We can travel around and watch him play.”

“Well,” McDonnell responded, “that’s probably not going to happen.”

The 75-year-old teacher died a few months later, in May, after suffering from complications following a major heart attack. Fowler was devastated. He’d wanted McDonnell to attend his Masters debut in 2011, and McDonnell canceled, according to his daughter Carrie, because he was afraid his health might fail him at Augusta National and distract his prize student.

Today is National Best Friend Day so I wanted to lock mine down…I WON!!

A post shared by R I C K I E (@rickiefowler) on Jun 8, 2018 at 5:32pm PDT

But in the seven years since his coach’s death, Fowler has honored his memory by fulfilling his prophecy. He has won four times on the PGA Tour and twice on the European Tour, and his second-place finish behind Patrick Reed at this year’s Masters left him with eight top-five finishes in the majors before his 30th birthday. Fowler has fame and fortune, boy-band looks, and a beautiful and devoted fiancée, track and field athlete and fitness model Allison Stokke, to whom he recently proposed from his knee on the beach.

“You gotta decide, are you going to be a Kardashian or are you going to be a golf pro?”
Butch Harmon, Rickie Fowler’s swing coach, to Fowler, in 2016

Fowler has a combined 3 million followers on Twitter and Instagram, and a place among the most well-liked contenders in his sport, or in any sport.

He just doesn’t have the one trophy he always seemed born to win. The one he said in April, after losing to Reed, that he felt was finally his to seize.
Barry McDonnell was at Rickie Fowler’s side from a young age and saw something special. Bill Teasdall

“I am ready to go win a major,” Fowler declared.

The U.S. Open starts Thursday, and there isn’t anyone in the field who needs it more than Fowler. It’s his time, his tournament to win or lose. He called Shinnecock one of his favorite courses after answering a lot of questions about his big-game fortitude, or lack thereof, on Masters Sunday, when he played the last 11 holes in 6-under and birdied the 18th to force Reed to make par to avoid a playoff. More than anything, Fowler answered the lingering question posed by his current coach, Butch Harmon, at the end of the 2016 season: “You gotta decide, are you going to be a Kardashian or are you going to be a golf pro?”

That was no Kardashian who followed a 65 on Saturday at Augusta with a closing 67 savored by a crowd that was trying like hell to will him home. When Reed heard the roar following Fowler’s birdie on the 72nd hole, he said, “I knew it had to be Rickie.” He knew it had to be a sound generated by the world’s most popular player to have never won a major.

Fowler met the victorious Reed with a hug when it was over, reliving a Groundhog Day encounter that has drawn criticism from the Old School set. Young American star (Reed, Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, Brooks Koepka) wins major. Young American star is greeted warmly by his contemporary, Fowler, who says all sorts of pleasant things about the winner and seems a little too content in his role as every champion’s best friend. You remember what Leo Durocher said, right?

Nice guys finish T-5.

“I think it will happen to Rickie,” Jack Nicklaus said of winning one of the sport’s four big ones. Nicklaus, of course, won a record 18 majors, so it’s a lot easier for him to say than it is for Fowler to do.

“To say it, that he’s too nice to win? No,” Nicklaus said. “Rickie’s a tough competitor, and you can watch him coming down the stretch, and he can get it up-and-down from anywhere under pressure. … He’s done that to win other tournaments, and he’ll do that eventually during a week that’s a major. He’ll do