If you told Rickie Fowler in late 2014, following a season in which he finished top five in every major, that he would start the next calendar year by making six straight cuts, but not posting a top-10 finish, he would no doubt be a little disappointed. On the other hand, if you told him that last year, it would be a different story.

Fowler’s struggles have been well-documented, but a return to Butch Harmon last autumn has seen a steady rise from the popular tour pro who, at the nadir of his troubles, fell as low as 160th in the Official World Golf Ranking. Now, the string of six made cuts to start the year, up to and including the T-13 at the Players Championship, is a terrific sign for the future. And if Fowler’s rise hasn’t quite been spectacular, it’s been steady enough that he’s now back to No. 59 in the OWGR.

RELATED: Breaking down the WGC-Dell Match Play groups

That sets up the potential for some drama this week at the WGC-Dell Match Play at Austin Country Club. At the conclusion of the tournament, any player inside the top 50 in the World Ranking who hasn’t already earned an invitation for the Masters (which Fowler hasn’t) gets a spot in the field. It’s the de facto cut-off to secure a trip to Augusta — the winner of next week’s Valero Texas Open also can get an invite if he’s not in — and Fowler is close enough to have a realistic chance.

The OWGR is always a moving target, since the ranking is so dependent on other players’ results, but projections from Twitter’s resident OWGR expert, Nosferatu, signal that if Fowler can get to the quarter-finals in Austin, he could crack the top 50 and find his way back to Augusta. Fowler’s path is narrow, however; he’s playing in a group that includes World No. 2 Jon Rahm; 2021 champion Billy Horschel; and a surging Keith Mitchell who is trying to hold on to his spot in the top 50 and earn a Masters invite of his own. Even if Fowler gets through that group, he would then have to win at least one knockout round match on Saturday morning.

It’s a tough task, but the Masters is very much on his mind.

“My short-term goal is to obviously get myself back in Augusta,” Fowler said, where he last played in 2020. “I knew I needed to come here and play well. I wasn’t sure of exactly what I needed to do. The nice thing with the kind of World Rankings and what’s coming off, really, anything I do that puts points on the board is only going to move me up from here moving forward.”

Fowler is currently set to play next week in San Antonio as well to take a last crack at Augusta, but could change his plans if this week’s play is good enough to get him into the field.

“I have to drive it well,” he said of his goals for the week. “I hadn’t been feeling that great the last few weeks. Driving it was one of the areas that kind of felt the worst. … But obviously some tough match-ups and you can’t really dictate a whole lot on how the other guy’s going to play. I’ve played a lot with Jon Rahm over the years. We’ve been paired together quite a bit. We both enjoy playing together. He seems to play well when he’s paired with me, so I know that’s going to be a tough match out of the gate. Billy and I were Walker Cup teammates and partners in 2007. And Keith Mitchell, he can flat out play.”

This is the first time Fowler is playing in the Match Play since 2016. That year, the only time he competed with pool play, he failed to get out of round robin. In his five other career starts in the event, however, Fowler reached the quarter-finals three times, his best finish being a third-place showing in 2014.

Even if he can’t finish his late charge to reach the Masters, Fowler knows he’s on a positive trajectory, and his stability off the course even during the worst of his results kept him in a place where he had the chance to turn it around.

“Even the last few years when I hadn’t been playing very well, everything other than golf was great,” he said. “It was a good learning period. I wish it was a bit shorter. But, no, I feel like I’m the same as I was the last few years on and off the course. The only thing is I do feel a lot better and have a lot more confidence … the golf part of it is a bit more fun because I know what I’m capable of.”

It’s obvious that Fowler badly wants to make the Masters — who wouldn’t? — but he’s maintaining the low-expectations approach that has served him so well since the autumn. His confidence is on the rise, and the fact that he’s been finishing so well while his swing hasn’t felt top-notch the last few weeks is a sign for him that really good things are coming. Early in his press conference, he was asked about Scottie Scheffler, and his diagnosis of the World No. 1 could easily have doubled as a hope — and perhaps a prediction — for himself:

“All these guys out here can play,” he said, “but when you’ve got a lot of momentum and you got a lot of confidence, the game seems pretty easy.”

The post Rickie Fowler’s late bid to qualify for the Masters requires some heroics this week in Austin appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Ryan Herrington
Scottie Scheffler was looking invincible in the 18-hole final of the WGC-Dell Matchplay Championship on Sunday, holding a 3-up lead against match-play menace Kevin Kisner through 11 holes. The only way it appeared Scheffler would be rattled at Austin Country Club is if he made a mistake of his own doing, which didn’t look likely … until it happened.

On the par-5 12th, Scheffler was just to the right of the green in two with a short chip to set up a birdie try after Kisner had hit his approach to seven feet. But for the first time seemingly all weekend, Scheffler stumbled—flubbing the chip as it rolled meekly into a bunker just five feet ahead of him.

Kisner, winner of the championship in 2019 and runner-up in 2018, was no doubt sensing a potential opening. He hadn’t won a hole all match, but if he could do so here, potentially he could grab the momentum. Perhaps Scheffler sensed it, too.

But that opening closed quickly when Scheffler did this:

From whoops to wow ?

Scottie Scheffler remains 3UP thru 12 after a roller-coaster hole. pic.twitter.com/Bi5vFrPb7V

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) March 27, 2022

Say it with us: The vagaries of matchplay!

Kisner, to his credit, rolled in his birdie putt to tie the hole. But it was a crushing blow that made Scheffler’s eventual 4-and-3 victory feel inevitable.

It was a glorious week for Scheffler in his home state. Of course, he ascended to World No. 1 for the first time in his career—and he did so in rather dramatic fashion in a few of his matches.

Most notably, his hole-out, walk-off chip to defeat Seamus Power in quarterfinals:

A walk-off chip-in to advance to the semifinals ?

Scottie Scheffler defeats Seamus Power 3&2 and punches his ticket into the final four @DellMatchPlay. pic.twitter.com/4QY0xCAdWm

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) March 26, 2022

And there was this wild birdie—in a critical moment of Scheffler’s Round of 16 victory over Billy Horschel:

Yes, it’s nice to have some luck on your side in match play—and Scheffler certainly had some of it this week. But make no mistake about it: Scheffler was dominant in securing his third victory in less than three months. And his new No. 1 ranking is well-deserved.

The post Scottie Scheffler’s flubbed chip—followed by a holed bunker shot—sums up his WGC-Matchplay brilliance appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Shane Ryan
AUSTIN — The WGC-Dell Technologies Matchplay begins tomorrow at Austin Country Club in what can safely be called the most exciting Wednesday in golf (there’s not much competition). Aside from team events like the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup, it’s essentially our only chance to see the world’s best golfers competing in this unique format. We asked a handful of the top contenders a simple question: If you had to give someone a single piece of advice on how to excel at match play, what would you say? Their responses were wide-ranging, psychologically astute and, occasionally, in direct contrast to what another had said.

“I like to play every single hole as if I’m 2 down,” Jordan Spieth said, pointing out the one and only mentality change he makes for match play. “I start the match 2 down and when I get to even it resets. I go back to 2 down. Just stay aggressive. When you get up sometimes it almost feels like you’re protecting a three-shot lead in a tournament when things can change so quickly, especially with the back nine out here. That hasn’t changed back into my junior golf days … it made me play aggressive golf.”

In terms of psychology, Jon Rahm pointed to the value of resilience in a format that is particularly volatile, and in which—unlike stroke play—a bad stretch may not spell doom.

“I think it’s never giving up,” he said. “I know it sounds so cliché, but if you’re 5 down, six holes to play, try to win six. It’s never over until it’s over, and momentum is a massive thing. One swing can change it all, and it can happen. You don’t need to play perfect. … If you just keep that mindset of being aggressive and just fighting for every shot, you should probably do fine in match play.”

“Just don’t get too down on yourself if it’s not going your way,” Robert Macintyre agreed. “Even with a couple holes to go, there’s still plenty of opportunities.”

Others, like Scottie Scheffler, felt that it’s possible to get lost in tactics and forget that good golf is, as always, the most important element.

Michael Reaves
Billy Horschel shakes hands with Scottie Scheffler after winning 2 and 1 in the final of the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play.

“I think people overthink it,” said Scheffler, who lost the Match Play final last year to Billy Horschel. “I think a lot of people put too much strategy into giving putts or random stuff like that. For the most part, I think the only time your game plan really changes is if the guy you’re playing with makes a really big mistake.”

Horschel concurred, saying, “I think people get too much involved in trying to play the player, in my opinion. … Sometimes a guy will hit it to 15 feet and you’re like, ‘man, I’ve got to hit this one close, too.’ Well, he’s not guaranteed to make that 15-footer. Then you hit a bad shot and you wind up making bogey and the guy just has an easy two-putt par.”

On the other hand, Horschel conceded that there are times when you can’t help but notice what your opponent is doing and react to it. Xander Schauffele remembered a moment from the 2019 Presidents Cup in Melbourne when Adam Scott became annoyed at an incident outside the ropes early in the round, and he realized that he had a chance to capitalize and extend his lead before Scott made his inevitable run.

“There’s always opportunities and sort of swings in the span of 18 holes, even in nine holes, where you can kind of feel momentum go your way,” he said. “You make a long putt or you make a birdie—a guy hits it to two feet or six feet and you make a 30-footer or a chip-in and then he ends up missing the six-footer, you’d call it a big emotional swing in a match. You alluded to the Adam Scott situation there. A player that good is always going to go on a run, and you just need to take as much of an advantage as possible of that situation, and that’s sort of what Austin [Kaiser, his caddie] and I talked about at that moment.”

The concept of playing tight golf, and not making major errors that essentially hand a hole to the opponent, was foremost on the mind of Collin Morikawa, who was disappointed at his poor showing at this event last year (a knockout after the group round), but who went undefeated in four Ryder Cup matches.

“You never want to give away shots,” he said. “The biggest thing I learned last year is, I was three-putting, I was making stupid bogeys, I was putting myself in bad positions when I might have been in the middle of the fairway. And sometimes when you force issues, sometimes it’s risk-reward. Sometimes you get away with it and sometimes you don’t, and I just compounded those mistakes, and that’s what you can’t do.”

Viktor Hovland, a former U.S. Amateur champion, emphasized a similar theme, as well as an old piece of advice that every match-play golfer learns: Expect your opponent to be heroic.

“You have to have the mindset that, OK, I’m probably going to have to shoot five, six under par to beat this guy. … I feel like sometimes I’ve tried to maybe force things a little bit too much knowing the other guy is 40 feet away and feeling like I have to stick one in there close and then end up short-siding myself. Then he two-putts for a win and I make bogey instead of just playing my normal game.”

“Always expect the other person to hole out or do something crazy,” Schauffele said, echoing Hovland, “so you’re never surprised.”

In summary, this is a complicated format, in which you’ll hear advice that sounds contradictory: play more aggressively than normal, but don’t change your usual approach; ignore the opponent, but pay careful attention to his stumbles if there’s momentum to be seized; don’t get forced into desperation, yet always expect your opponent to make everything.

The beauty of match play is that the competition is so fluid, seemingly opposite credos can be true at the right time, and the more you hear, the more you realize that each piece of advice boils down to a single broader point: No matter where you are, have a keen sense of the moment, and apply the right lesson at the right time.

The post Top tour players share their best advice for excelling at matchplay appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.