Rickie Fowler Adds Killer Instinct to Impressive Skill Set in Epic Players Win

It was the stuff hyperbolic dreams are made of.

As Sergio Garcia crossed from the front to the back nine with a two-shot lead at The Players Championship on Sunday afternoon, the NBC announce crew was already preparing its anecdotal redemption package.

Hosts Dan Hicks and Johnny Miller recalled the 35-year-old Spaniard’s history of high-profile disappointments—including a soggy 17th-hole implosion at TPC Sawgrass two years ago—while dropping in affirmations that perhaps this was the moment at which competitive tides would turn.

At that point, not even the most prescient producer could have imagined what was next.

And based on what had happened, there was no reason that anyone might have.

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Given that Rickie Fowler was just six shots under par—and four shots off Garcia’s lead—with six holes remaining in a forgettable round, it was shaping up to be no more than the latest in a series of 2015 appearances in which the wildly popular Californian had managed little more than also-ran status.

He’d tied for ninth at the World Golf Championships last week in San Francisco and tied for 12th at both the Masters and the WGC-Cadillac Championship but had otherwise been standings-irrelevant with a finish in the 20s, two each in the 40s and 60s and another in the 70s alongside one missed cut.

The inglorious springtime followed up a maddeningly consistent but ultimately fruitless 2014 run, in which he joined Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus as the only players to finish in the top five of all four major tournaments in a year—but he did so while not adding a single trophy to a career total of one.

Toss in a Sports Illustrated poll in which he was deemed the PGA Tour’s co-most overrated player by 24 percent of his contemporaries, and it looked likely he’d provide further ammunition for those—like the New York Post’s Mark Cannizzaro—who labeled him a golfing “rock star without a hit song.”

The consensus was that Fowler was a friendly foe without killer instinct.

But, ironically, it may have been just the spark needed to start a competitive inferno.

“Definitely, if I need any extra,” he told a tournament media gathering when asked if the votes provided drive. “If there’s a time where I need something to kind of give me a kick in the butt, then I can think of that and it will put me in the right frame of mind to go out there and take care of business.”

To say he did so in Sunday’s remarkable waning hours would be akin to colossal understatement.

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Four birdies and an eagle in the last six holes slingshotted Fowler from pack middle to pack leader, and though Garcia and Kevin Kisner ultimately chased him into a playoff with rallies, the stuff he showed in a sudden return to TPC relevance is the same that can get him over this summer.

He played his final 10 holes—six regulation, four playoff—in eight under par and finally vanquished the gutty Kisner with a pressure-sopped tee shot that landed less than five feet from the pin on No. 17’s island green and a birdie putt that preceded another fully warranted stream of giddiness from Hicks.

“So often a dream-crusher, Fowler absolutely delivered down the stretch of holes at TPC Sawgrass like we have never seen before,” Hicks said, before adding three words that perfectly addressed the context:

“Overrated? Think again.”

Indeed. Though the win provides just a slight bump to Fowler’s No. 13 standing in the pre-tournament Official World Golf Ranking, it seems guaranteed to prepare him for the enhanced microscope—both off the course and on—that he’ll be under when major season resumes in mid-June.

With a belly chock-full of competitive resolve, he could be a far tougher animal to slay.

“It was pretty fun. This is special,” a victorious Fowler told NBC on the 17th green. “This will be one to look back on, for sure.”

And if he’s hoisting a U.S. Open trophy on June 21, we’ll all know exactly when it began to look like Fowler had shaken off the overrated stigma and finally broken through.