Pebble Beach: It’s the kind of compliment that can wear thin, but Rickie Fowler is confident he’ll shed the tag of “best player never to win a major” whether it’s at Pebble Beach this week or not.
Fowler will tee it up in a major for the 37th time when the US Open begins on Thursday.
The 30-year-old American has won five US PGA Tour titles, but has yet to break through on the game’s biggest stages and once again he faced the question of just how big a burden that had become.
“It’s a compliment in a way,” Fowler said. “Obviously there’s a lot of great players that haven’t won a major.
“It’s not necessarily something I think about or worry about. I know that when the time is right, it’s going to happen.”
Fowler noted he’d put himself in position to win majors, notably at the 2014 PGA Championship at Valhalla when he was left to regret ill-timed miscue at the par-three 14th as Rory McIlroy powered to victory and at Augusta National last year, when he couldn’t find enough late birdies to derail Patrick Reed.
“I wouldn’t say I’ve necessarily had one in my hands and let it slip away, which is a good thing,” Fowler said.
He was looking forward to tackling the challenge again at Pebble Beach, although he’s played the California course sparingly.
“I look at Pebble as not necessarily a place that the more you play it you have an advantage,” Fowler said. “It’s a pretty straightforward golf course. There’s only a couple of tee shots that are somewhat blind that you need to just make sure that you’re comfortable on lines. It’s pretty much right in front of you. Very small greens.
“So, I love that about it. It’s not very tricky. You hit it in a lot of the middle of the greens here, and you’re going to be in a good position.”
Meanwhile, fellow American Justin Thomas says missing the PGA Championship with a wrist injury was difficult but instructive, and he hopes he’ll have a chance to apply what he learnt watching Brooks Koepka’s Bethpage triumph when the US Open tees off.
“I feel like I learnt a lot,” said the world No. 7, who claimed his lone major title at the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow in 2017.
The seven-shot lead Koepka took into the final round at Bethpage last month dwindled to one stroke on the back nine before he emerged with the victory — his fourth major triumph.
“Watching how he handled that and the adversity that was thrown at him and just the shots that he hit when he needed to, because I know that I can get a little bit up and down with my emotions,” Thomas said. “I just feel like he handled that really well. So maybe if I got in that scenario then I could — I hate to say channel my inner BK, to boost his ego — but definitely show some of those characteristics.”
Thomas has had his own experience defending a big lead. He took a seven-stroke lead into the final day of the 2017 Sony Open, and won by the same margin.
“It’s still, to this day, the most nervous I’ve been teeing off,” Thomas said, adding that the pressure only increased with reporters helpfully pointing out that no one has ever blown a seven-shot lead in the history of the PGA Tour on a Sunday.
“Every question I got was led with that,” he said. “It was tough at the Sony Open. So I can’t imagine how it was at the PGA Championship.”
Koepka passed the test and arrived at Pebble Beach this week chasing history.
He can become just the second golfer, after Willie Anderson in 1903, 1904 and 1905 to win three straight US Open championships after his victories at Erin Hills in 2017 and wind-whipped Shinnecock Hills last year.
“Every major has their ‘Oh, wow, you won the US Open at Pebble Beach or you won the Open Championship at St. Andrews,’” Thomas said. This is as good as it gets for a US Open.”
