A New Rivalry

Article from the October 2014 issue of Compleat Golfer Magazine.

The void left by Tiger Woods’ extended absence from the game is set to be filled – but are Rory McIlroy and Rickie Fowler golf’s next rivalry or another budding bromance?

If the 2014 Majors showed anything, it’s that life beyond Tiger Woods is not as depressing as we had feared it might be. As a crop of 20-somethings emerges from the chasing pack, a new rivalry is set to excite the legions of fans for years to come.

A simple exchange of friendly tweets is all it has taken to set up what could potentially become the next big rivalry in golf – between the current top-ranked golfer, Rory Mcllroy, and his American counterpart, Rickie Fowler.

While 2014 provided a snapshot into the future, this one-on-one battle between the two great hopes from either side of the Atlantic has been developing for the better part of seven years. The burning question is whether it will evolve into a rivalry that golf fans will follow for many years to come.

Since the beginning of the sport, golf has thrown up a regular series of rivalries – some friendly, others developing into outright feuds, yet all of which spurred the players involved on to new heights of excellence.

We have seen the likes of Gene Sarazen and Walter Hagen, Sam Snead and Ben Hogan, and Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson battle it out for supremacy against each other, forcing eager-eyed patrons to choose between the alpha or underdog and creating plenty of 19th-hole arguments. It’s healthy for the game and adds an additional buzz to tournaments, especially when the protagonists head neck and neck down the final stretch of a Major.

For the past 15 years, however, we’ve been denied any sort of rivalry by the sheer genius of Tiger Woods. Nobody has even come close. Yes, players such as Vijay Singh, Ernie Els and Phil Mickelson have had a go, with some degree of success, but the end result has been the same -Tiger remained the man to beat.

Perhaps in the search for Tiger’s next challenger we’ve missed one rather important detail – that the next great rivalry in golf may not even involve the 14-time Major winner at all. Given the year he’s had, it’s not too great a leap to consider that Woods best days are now behind him, and who knows how much longer his creaking body will hold up?

If indeed Tiger represents the past, then Mcllroy and Fowler are the future of the sport – two more marketable athletes would be hard to find. Young, vibrant and precociously talented, the pair have been earmarked for greater things since their first competitive encounter in the 2007 Walker Cup, played at Royal County Down in Northern Ireland. Both players were the youngest in their respective teams, but their reputations were already largely known.

“I knew he was one of the top players,” Fowler reflected, “and once I got over there, I knew he was kind of their stud on the team.”

The pair met each other only once on the course during that event, when Mcllroy teamed up with Jonny Caldwell against Fowler and Billy Horschel. That day, Fowler got the better of Mcllroy with a 2 & 1 victory in the foursomes, but it left an impression on the young Northern Irishman.

“I felt like he was the best player on that team at the time,” Mcllroy said. “And he was also the nicest guy.”

The star-studded US team, featuring the likes of Dustin Johnson, Webb Simpson and Horschel, eventually won that Walker Cup tie by 12½ to 11 ½ points, with Fowler contributing three points.

The pair would only cross paths again in 2010, during Fowler’s first full year as a professional golfer. By this time, Mcllroy had successfully established himself in the paid ranks for two years, having notched up his first win on the European Tour in the Dubai Desert Classic in 2009 and his first across the Atlantic in the 2010 Quail Hollow Championship on the US Tour.

Rory vs Rickie                                        McIlroy                            Fowler   (as at 1 September 2014)

Age:                                                                 25                                   25

World Ranking:                                               1                                    11

Career Victories:                                            15                                    2

2014 Earnings:                                $7 036 096  (R75 109 973)    $4 150 317  (R44 304 427)

Driving Distance:                                           284m                             271m

Scoring Average:                                            68.9                              70.4

Despite this victory as a rookie, Mcllroy was pipped by Fowler for the US Tour’s Rookie of the Year award, which was seen by most non-Americans as something of a hometown decision owing to Fowler having failed to collect a win that season. He did, however, finish with higher earnings than Mcllroy, which is usually the deciding factor for the award, and his captain’s pick by Corey Pavin for the 2010 Ryder Cup at Celtic Manor certainly helped the cause too.

Even at this early stage, this notion of a rivalry between the two was becoming apparent, although with their worlds so far removed from each other, it was still very much an idea used by the media to create some sort of hype.

Mcllroy was already the young superstar from the European Tour and Fowler was touted as the next big thing in the US, but the two barely crossed paths, on or off the course, and therefore didn’t have too much to say about one another.

Two significant encounters in 2011 gave the early impression that Fowler was in the same league, if not better than Mcllroy. The first came when they were paired together in the third round of the Open Championship at Royal St George’s and, in adverse weather conditions, Fowler bested Mcllroy by six shots. The second time occurred in Korea, in the OneAsia Kolon Korea Open, and Fowler once again topped Mcllroy by six shots en route to his first professional victory.

Talk of this rivalry came to the fore in 2012 when they found themselves in a sudden-death playoff for the Quail Hollow Championship alongside American DA Points. Despite Mcllroy having won the event two years prior, it was Fowler who took the spoils to earn his first US Tour victory, and at that point it looked like the 23-year-old American had the better of his Northern Irish counterpart.

Yet, while his dominance over his peer on a head-to-head basis was apparent, when the two weren’t paired alongside one another, it was Mcllroy who was racking up the wins, including an eight-shot win in the PGA Championship, two FedEx Cup Playoff titles and the Dubai DP World Tour Championship.

Fowler may have won one battle in 2012, but as Mcllroy cantered to the moneylist titles on both sides of the Atlantic, it was clear that the American had lost the war.

With Fowler lagging behind, the conversation shifted to the more appealing notion of a rivalry between the two hottest properties in golf: Mcllroy and Woods. But while Woods would go on to win five tournaments in 2013, Mcllroy struggled with an equipment change, management issues and a celebrity relationship with former top tennis player Caroline Wozniacki.

Fowler, after an inconsistent 2013, decided he needed to make some changes to his swing and called Woods’ former coach, Butch Harmon.

“He said:’I want to be known more for my golf than my clothes and my hat. I want to contend in Majors,'”Harmon explained.

Fowler and Harmon began 2014 working on some big swing changes, but neither expected the results to come so quickly.

“He had me work on a few things and made me look like a total hack on the range,” Fowler said. “It just felt foreign to me at first. But it was really cool to see how quickly I was able to pick it up. Butch has been a big influence this year, with what we’ve done with the golf swing to make it more efficient and more repetitive and a little less dependent on timing.”

In the space of a few months, the American has added new substance to his style. No longer just ‘the guy in orange’, Fowler, with top-five finishes in each of the four Majors this year, has become a serious contender. All he needs is a few more wins – and there are many who figure that these are not too far off. While his colourful attire remains, Fowler continues to be a catalyst for getting younger players into the game, if only to dress like their idol on tour.

As we move towards the end of the year, it is clear that the buzz has shifted back to the Mcllroy-versus-Fowler theme, especially after the Open and US PGA Championships, where Mcllroy triumphed and Fowler finished tied-second and tied-third respectively.

While Fowler has failed to add another victory to his résumé since 2012, Mcllroy has become the man to beat, winning four big events this year, including the last two Majors of the year. They may be worlds apart in terms of ranking and victories, and one cannot help but feel that when Fowler finally wins again, the floodgates will open and we could be in for a rivalry reminiscent of Nicklaus and Watson at their best.

The days of Tiger Woods dominating every headline regardless of his position on the leaderboard appear to have passed for the time being, with the most telling evidence being the increase in TV ratings during the final round of the US PGA Championship at Valhalla.

“I want to be known more for my golf than my clothes. I want to contend in  majors.” – Rickie Fowler

While Woods spent the weekend at home, having missed only his fourth professional cut in a Major, the two youngsters gave us a glimpse of the future as they battled it out for the final Major of the year.

Of course, the Woods factor will continue to be a media talking point – that is the respect that is afforded to a 14-time Major champion – but questions remain over whether he has either the will or the strength to beat Nicklaus’record of 18 Majors.

A new storyline may just be what the world of golf needs right now; Mcllroy and Fowler, through a quick Twitter exchange after the US PGA Championship, indicated that they are looking forward to building up and enjoying a friendly rivalry for years to come. For that to happen, Fowler needs to make the next move – and a win in The Masters next April would be the perfect riposte.