Rickie Fowler’s playoff run sparked debate. It missed bigger point

With a T6 finish at last week’s FedEx St. Jude Championship, the first leg of the FedEx Cup Playoffs, Rickie Fowler vaulted himself from No. 64 to No. 48 in the FedEx Cup standings. Those four solid rounds at TPC Southwind, on the heels of a T14 finish at the Open, meant that Fowler advanced to this week’s BMW Championship and earned a spot in all of next year’s Signature Events.

Fowler’s playoff advancement reignited the debate over sponsor exemptions into Signature Events, their use, and their downstream impacts. Fowler, who did not finish in the top 50 last year, received sponsor invites into six Signature Events this season. The FedEx Cup points he accrued at those tournaments — most notably the T7 at the Memorial Tournament, which subsequently got him into the Open, where he finished T14 — helped boost him to the BMW Championship and next year’s Signature Event list over other players who were not as fortunate as Fowler.

“Being that I got a handful of spots this year, which I’m incredibly grateful for, unfortunately I really didn’t take advantage of many of those opportunities up until Jack’s event,” Fowler said on Sunday when asked about not needing exemptions next year. “Didn’t play that well in any of them. Those elevated fields and maybe some more points, I didn’t really get them. But it was great to have a tee time in them this year, and didn’t really want to bank on that for next year. Yeah, nice to be in a position where we’ll be able to be back in those and not have to write notes and calls and ask for favors.”

The Fowler discussion, which is an easy entry point into a conversation about the PGA Tour and how it does/should operate, missed a few things as the handringing over Fowler beating out the likes of Chris Kirk, Alrdrich Potgieter and others intensified.

On the surface, it’s easy to say that there should be no sponsor exemptions for Signature Events. In a perfect world, it would just be the best 70-100 players based on merit alone. Perhaps they should provide FedEx Cup points to those who play on exemptions unless they win. Maybe you should only be eligible for exemptions for one year, but not in consecutive seasons.

But that’s not the world we live in, and it’s certainly not the world the PGA Tour, which relies on sponsors to host tournaments, exists in.

The PGA Tour, like all other sports leagues, is in the entertainment and, more importantly, the attention industry.

My colleague James Colgan wrote an interesting piece last week about how golf can learn from how Roger Goodell and the NFL approach their business model. They are hunting attention. The goal is to grab it and keep it 24/7/365.

The PGA Tour is operating on a much smaller scale, but as it looks to grow under new CEO Brian Rolapp, who was Goodell’s No. 2 at the NFL, the hunt for attention will take an even bigger priority in Ponte Vedra, Fla.

That brings us to Signature Events, sponsor exemptions and Fowler, among others.

If company X (be it RBC or AT&T or whoever) is paying out X millions of dollars to put on a tournament that promises the best players on the PGA Tour, and they want to have the ability to invite three or four guys who didn’t qualify who will bring more eyeballs to the tournament, that’s a totally acceptable trade off. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there is inequity in all aspects of golf and life. Sometimes, when you are more liked, have a long track record of being easy to work with, and are good at what you do, you’re given more opportunities than others who might be performing higher than you currently are.

Fowler brings eyeballs. People like him and watch when he’s in contention or not. Kids dress up like him still and come out to follow him. The same can’t be said for most of the players he finished ahead of to get into the BMW. That’s not fair, but it’s life. Next year, tournament sponsors will roll out the red carpet for Jordan Spieth and Max Homa, two other popular players who did not finish in the top 50 this year. For a sport trying to grab and maintain attention in a world of shorter and shorter attention spans, with its main demographic shrinking, that’s a pretty fair trade-off. And if Fowler plays well enough in those events — he’s currently the 38th-ranked player per Data Golf — and it helps him get inside the top 50, that’s a good thing for the PGA Tour.

But I think something else has been lost in the Fowler discourse because it’s easy to jab Fowler due to the bright clothes and the boring press conferences and the high volume of commercials.

Fowler didn’t have to be in this position. He didn’t have to be grinding on the PGA Tour, trying to recapture the magic he once had. He, like Justin Rose, who won the FedEx St. Jude Championship, could have easily cashed in with LIV Golf when his game was at its lowest and ridden off into the sunset. He could have been content with what was and decided that the grind to become Rickie Fowler again was no longer worth it.

Like Rose, Fowler chose a different path. He chose to try and dig it out. He returned to the winner’s circle at the 2023 Rocket Classic. His game dipped again last year, but he has been building back and playing good golf this summer.

For Fowler, that part of professional golf, the endless search, still fills his soul.

“I love the grind,” Fowler said at the John Deere Classic. “The guys who have had success, through the ups and downs, you appreciate the tough times because they kind of help define you a bit.”

Fowler expanded on that Tuesday at Caves Valley ahead of the BMW Championship.

“Going through plenty of tough years now, if you look over the last five, six years, I’ve had plenty of highs and I’ve seen the lows,” Fowler said. “The tough times definitely make you appreciate when you are playing well and when golf can seem easy, yeah, you appreciate those because you know they’re not going to last forever, so take advantage of those when you can. But I think that’s part of why some of us out here are — all the guys out here for the most part, I don’t know why we love it so much, but it’s the grind of it. You can never perfect it. There’s been a few guys that have gotten close, but I feel like it always humbles you and kind of brings you back to reality maybe when you least expect it.”

So Fowler, one of golf’s most popular faces for the last 15 years, is still searching and fighting, trying to outrun the daylight and build himself back up again. It’s admirable, just as it is with Rose, that the chase still means something — that it’s still what matters.

There’s no debating that the sponsor’s invitations Fowler received helped him finish in the top 50. It’s also true that he had to play well at the Memorial and the Open Championship to secure those points. He also had to finish high in Memphis to get to the BMW.

But like it or not, Fowler’s inclusion in those tournaments served a larger purpose for the PGA Tour. For a sport that is desperately trying to create buzz and garner attention, Fowler helps move that mission forward.

Rickie Fowler’s presence is good for the PGA Tour. A long-term resurgence would be even better.

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