subject: Victory Door Opens For Wells Fargo Champion Fowler [print this page] Fowler's impressive win on Sunday at the Wells Fargo Championship went down like a cold Fanta on a hot summer day. There hadn't been any doubt that he would win on tour since he made the Ryder Cup as a rookie in 2010, but the fame and money usually come after a couple of trophies. Things moved fast for Fowler, and before he knew it, he was one of the most popular young American players on tour. If you were the cynical sort, you could have branded him a fad, but he never acted like he didn't belong on tour.
In late 2009, he nearly made enough money to get his tour card without going to Q-school after coming up short in a playoff at the www.heygolfer.com Open. The next year, in his first full season on tour, he had seven top-10s, including two seconds. When Ryder Cup captain Corey Pavin made Fowler one of his four captain's selections, it was considered by many to be a "reach" pick, but he fought hard for a 0-1-2 record that included a memorable singles match in which he birdied the final four holes to notch a halve with Italy's Edoardo Molinari.
Last year was supposed to be a breakout year for Fowler, but it was a pretty mediocre campaign until he beat Rory McIlroy by six strokes in October to get his first professional win at the Kolon Korea Open. It was an important milestone for Fowler because by then McIlroy had asserted himself as the best player of his generation. Fowler had the flash, but the Northern Irishman had the game for the long run. That's how Callaway FT-iZ Driver looks right now, but things could change down the road.
Fowler made a strong case on Sunday for why McIlroy will have to contend with him for the next 20 years. In the first playoff hole with D.A. Points and McIlroy, Fowler hit the approach shot of his life to set up a short birdie putt that he holed to earn his first PGA Tour victory.
Fowler doesn't have the polished game or length of McIlroy but is a very fierce competitor. Even though they are the same age, McIlroy has much more professional experience than Fowler, who was playing college golf when the reigning U.S. Open champion turned pro in 2007.
Still, Fowler will win his share of tournaments. He'll be among several excellent players over the next dozen years to challenge McIlroy for TaylorMade Mens RocketBallz TP Driver
supremacy. Time will tell how well Fowler's freewheeling game endures under pressure, but one thing we know is that few players will match his rare combination of style and substance.
The Cut Man
The former world No. 1 and 14-time major winner started his week at Quail Hollow by explaining how he had fixed the swing issues that plagued him at the Masters. And on Friday afternoon, after he missed the cut by a shot, he was still talking about his golf swing.
"If I get over the golf ball and I feel uncomfortable, I hit it great," Tiger Woods said on Friday. "It's just that I get out there and I want to get comfortable, and I follow my old stuff, and I hit it awful.
"All the shots I got uncomfortable on, I just said, 'I'm going to get really uncomfortable and make it feel as bad as it possibly could,' I striped it. I know what I need to do, it's just I need more reps doing TaylorMade R11S driver ."
Wells Fargo marked only the eighth time that Tiger has missed a cut since turning pro in 1996. Eight missed cuts in 267 career PGA Tour events is an amazing accomplishment. Yet with each passing week, Tiger has grown more neurotic and frustrated about his game. We shouldn't be surprised if weekends off become a more regular occurrence for the 72-time winner. His victory in March at Bay Hill now seems more like a minor detour from a downward spiral as an everyman tour player who wins on occasion.
But missing cuts are a routine part of playing the game on a regular basis. As the years pass, Tiger will certainly miss more cuts. Phil Mickelson had two years -- 1993 and 1995 -- when he missed nine cuts each season. But his Hall of Fame career isn't being measured by cuts. Jack Nicklaus had a stretch from 1962 to 1979 when he only missed nine cuts in 335 tour events. Yet what we remember most about his illustrious career are the 18 major championships.
Cuts give a good barometer of consistency, but they never fully explain the plight of a player, unless he's missing the weekend week after week.
So Tiger can't let a minor setback like a missed cut here and there allow him to lose sight of his ultimate goal of passing Nicklaus' majors record. Not playing on the weekend at Quail Hollow might have been embarrassing for him and a cause for some alarm about the shape of his game as he approaches the Players and the U.S. Open, but it doesn't mean he should scrap everything that he's been working on for the last couple of years.
At the end of his career, none of us will remember how Cleveland - Classic 290 Driver played at the 2012 Wells Fargo Championship, unless it marks the beginning of a long, slow decline of his game. Every player knows the moment when it becomes very difficult to simply make a PGA Tour cut, and Tiger is light years from that lonely place.
