Rickie Fowler at John Deere sign of Signature Event impact

Rickie Fowler hasn’t teed it up at TPC Deere Run in 15 years. Back then, he was a 21-year-old rising star on the PGA Tour with everything ahead of him. Now, he’s a 36-year-old father of two who arrives back in the Quad Cities searching for the best of his game.

Fowler hasn’t played the John Deere Classic in 15 years because he usually plays the Genesis Scottish Open and then the Open Championship before taking some time off before the FedEx Cup Playoffs.

But Fowler is back in the Quad Cities as part of the strongest projected John Deere field in the Official World Golf Ranking era (h/t OWGR guru Nosferatu on X), looking to secure much-needed FedEx Cup points as the season winds down.

The PGA Tour’s Signature Event model has been polarizing early in its existence, but one of its early achievements is getting players like Fowler, Jason Day and Max Homa to commit to fields like the John Deere, a tournament they might have skipped in the past as they looked to the Scottish Open and Open Championship.

The John Deere Classic always found itself in a precarious spot in the schedule. It used to take place the week before the Open Championship, which made most top players steer clear as they planned for golf’s oldest major. When the Scottish Open became a co-sanctioned event, the John Deere moved up a week, but its spot in the calendar still plagued it.

But with only five tournaments left before the FedEx Cup playoffs begin, the John Deere is becoming a place for players like Fowler, Homa and Tom Kim, who need FedEx Cup points.

With only the top 70 making the FedEx Cup playoffs and the top 50 getting into next year’s Signature Events, points are at a premium for those whose seasons haven’t gone according to plan. Fowler sits at No. 72 in the standings. Homa is at 122 and Kim is at 90. Day is currently 27th but gobbling up points at the John Deere can help him bolster his prospects of remaining in the top 30 even with a poor start to the playoffs. Sungjae Im, who is 24th, is also in the field.

Fowler, who typically plays the Scottish, has elected to play the John Deere and skip the Scottish ahead of the Open Championship. Fowler said his decision wasn’t based on his FedEx Cup points standing, but also noted he made the schedule tweaks with the final two events of the regular season — the 3M and Wyndham — in mind in case he chooses to enter.

“I was basically going to play here or Scottish, and one of the reasons I haven’t played here in quite a while was being before the British and then it being before the Scottish,” Fowler said on Tuesday at TPC Deere Run. “I have always played the Scottish before the British. That was just always my schedule. This year I felt to free up the potential of the back end, the British and playing potentially 3M and/or Greensboro, I figured having Scottish off before the British and playing these three weeks in a row, Travelers, Rocket, and here at the Deere, felt like was a better flow.”

Asked about the impact the Signature Events have had on events like the John Deere, Fowler said it was still too early to see the impact, but admitted the “normal” events are seeing stronger fields.

“You’re seeing guys playing more, what the events mean, what points mean, until everything kind of settles, or there is maybe an adjustment or change in how many events and what events are worth as far as having Signature, regular, and opposite fields,” Fowler said. “So we’ll see where that goes. The current state, you know, you are seeing — if you’re looking at event structure, there is — I don’t want to say standard, but there are elevated, normal PGA Tour events, and then opposite fields.

“The normal events seem to be getting a little bit stronger field, just with guys playing maybe a little bit more and where things fit in the schedule. And then it’s tough. I think it has forced guys to maybe play some more.”

The John Deere will also see several players looking to find the points needed to keep their cards pulling into town. The PGA Tour is trimming the fully exempt cutoff from 125 players to 100 for 2026. That’s a change that Fowler, who wants a leaner Tour, both in number of events and cards, favors. While the Signature Event model has created a tiered system of PGA Tour events, Fowler thinks that having fewer events and building the schedule around the majors and the Players will give every PGA Tour event an elevated feel because the supply will be lower.

“I feel like there needs to be less events, less cards, the Tour gets elevated, the product is a little bit more — there’s more continuity from what you would say a top event to a lower level or an opposite field event,” Fowler said last week at the Rocket Classic. “You know, sometimes it’s tough, you have to remove yourself from your current situation, but I don’t think the PGA Tour should necessarily have secondary or opposite field events. I think the PGA Tour product is the PGA Tour product. So there’s a lot you could go into, but to me, a PGA Tour event should be a PGA Tour event, and it shouldn’t be necessarily, well, this one’s elevated or this is an opposite field.

“And then it goes into you’re talking about scheduling and where you’re at based on if it’s elevated or not or majors. The majors and the Players are the core events or the big events that are on the schedule, and golf fans to non-golf fans, those are the ones that they know about. They know what those are. How we elevate PGA Tour events outside of that, and so then it may not become a thing where are you sandwiched or not, and maybe not as big of a scheduling difficulty if there’s all those different kinds of events.”

Fowler missed the cut at the Rocket Classic and has only one top-10 finish on the season, which came at the Memorial Tournament. He has three other top-25 finishes but ranks outside the top 100 in approach play, putting and around the green.

Fowler has said he feels his game is “trending” in the right direction, but his lack of consistent quality play has him searching at a place he hasn’t played in a decade and a half. Should he find what he has been looking for, Fowler can start to open the door to the 2026 Signature Events without relying on sponsor exemptions, of which he received six this season.

Either way, the people at TPC Deere Run will benefit from having Fowler back for the first time in 15 years. And they might have the Signature Event model partially to thank.