'I'm not scared to fail' said Rickie Fowler, former #4 player in the world, winner of 8 international events (5 on the PGA Tour), 45 Top 5 finishes, 15 second place finishes (3 in majors). He's earned over $45MM by playing on the tour and tens, if not hundreds of millions more through sponsorships and popularity bonuses (PGA's Player Impact Program).
If you didn't know his recent history though, you'd think that his statement about failure was just a humble brag throw away but Rickie Fowler has known a lot of professional failure over the last few years. After coming in hot as a 'made for social media' boy golf wonder (boy band?) in his early 20's, he fell almost completely off the map.
The former Top 5 player in the world had fallen to 185th in the world. While his popularity amongst fans hadn’t faded, in the world of golf, world rankings do matter when it comes to qualification to play in marquee and major events. Don’t be fooled by his approachable (in-person & in television commercials everywhere) persona. Rickie Fowler is a fierce competitor who wants to be playing with the best, in the best tournaments, & competing to be the best. Here he was though, not even able to qualify through regional play-in events.
So it was both exciting & heartbreaking to see him rollin’ at the top of the leaderboard for three straight days of the 2023 US Open… only to fall apart in the final round, finishing tied 5th. Only a year earlier, the thought of Rickie in contention would have seemed ridiculous given his very public downfall but here he was with a shot (missed) at history.
Unfortunately, that history of disappointment seemed to follow him like a cloud. Just the the next week at the Travelers Championship, he was in the mix again, even carding the lowest round of his career on Saturday. But like Kris Kristofferson's classic song, ‘Sunday Mornin’ Come Down’, Rickie’s Sunday was another headache as he finished T-16th.
So it wasn’t out of line for reporters to pry into Fowler’s mental state as the next weekend saw him going into Sunday of the Rocket Mortgage Classic with a one shot lead and chance to finally get the monkey off his back.
His answer:
‘I’m not scared to fail’
Sometimes we say things because it’s what’s expected to be said. Sometimes we say things to convince our own head. For Rickie Fowler, I think he meant exactly what he said because he’d seen failure & he was still here.
It was rumored that Fowler was offered over $100MM to leave the PGA for the upstart/controversial LIV league. He declined, instead choosing to try grind his way back to the top of a tour that, unlike LIV, had no guarantees. Every loss on a Sunday was a reminder of what he turned away. Still, other parts of life were happening for Fowler. In the time since his last career win, he’d gotten married, become a Dad, watched (and cheered) his friends have success after success. Surely, there was a point in time when failure was the scariest thing in his mind. But like the boogeyman under the bed, once you’ve been kicked down to its level & stare it in the face, it might not look as scary as you’d imagined it.
After the Bucks' 2023 playoff exit, NBA superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo became frustrated with a reporter's suggestion that their season was a failure. 'There's no failure in sports. There's good days, bad days; some days you are able to be successful, some days you're not. It's stepping stones to success'
11 Years after his first win in a PGA event, 7 years after representing the United States in the Olympics, 4 years since his last win, a year after playing so poorly that he almost lost his professional status, and 1 day after declaring that failure is not his fear, Rickie Fowler was once again, a winner on the PGA tour as he claimed victory at the Rocket Mortgage Classic in Detroit. To no one’s surprise, he did it with (his own) style. After almost collapsing (again) with a drive into the crowd on the final hole, he calmly collected himself, recovered, & sank an 11 foot putt to win in a nail biter & the 3 man playoff.
By definition, failure is:
'omission of performance'
Perhaps how you define performance is suspect because to see Rickie in the thick of professional failure, you’d never know it:
That's Rickie Fowler in failure but if failure is omission of performance, then Rickie never failed to perform as a role model, as a friend, as a colleague.
So what then of Rickie in victory?
You'd think he'd be bombastic and boast having risen from the ashes. Hardly.
As the crowd went nuts around him, Rickie kissed his wife and held his daughter. The journalist asked for his thoughts after all he'd been through the last few years and how it must feel now to finally get a win again:
‘Winning is great but there’s a lot more to life than that’
—
postscript: I’m not a golf writer. In fact, I'd be hard pressed to say I'm even a golfer. While I enjoy the activity, I struggle to find the time to play. What I am is a fan of folks who have been knocked down and chosen to get up again. I root for the story. I root for those fighting the perception of what failure is and how it should define us.
I'll note that there was a time that I was 100% driven by fear. Every action I took towards what I thought would be success was a direct reaction to the deep down fear of being caught by the great white whale of ‘failure’. But after experiencing it, I’m now driven by something different that’s less about what I’m scared of and more about what I’m attracted to.
Like Rickie, who may have found that the boogeyman isn't quite as it seemed. I think we could all benefit from his point of view:
‘I’m not scared to fail’
-Sam
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