Rickie Fowler’s Quest

I get it, I’m not supposed to write/tweet/text about OSU golf or anyone related to OSU golf during any golf tournaments, much less before the final round of the year’s third major.

For those of you who don’t follow me on Twitter some of my followers have pointed out that when I tweet about a golfer having a solid round I seem to have what some psychologists might deem an “adverse affect” on that person. I’ve done it to pretty much every OSU golfer in every tournament in most every scenario you can think of. My jinx knows no bounds.

So that means I’m due right?

I think the only person more due than me is Rickie Fowler. It still blows my mind that he hasn’t won a tournament yet. Let’s do it together, Rick. Yes we can! Yes we can! Wait, it’s not 2008 anymore is it?

Fowler has three second place finishes (Phoenix Open, Memorial, and Frys.com Open) but an increasingly-popular-to-talk-about zero titles to his name in his short two year career as a professional golfer.

But on Saturday he had the round of his life. In a nasty, torrential streak of blistering rain and chilling wind only God Himself could have authored, Fowler went out and posted a strong little 68 which no doubt felt more like a 58 given the conditions. His score was three clear of the second best before the weather let up for the afternoon tee times. As if the leaders needed more help!

Ideally the weather would have rolled in at about 1:15 local time and just buried all the leaders so we’d have something like 42 golfers within three strokes going into Sunday. But Fowler doesn’t deal in ideals. He just stares down mother nature, not to mention his U.S. Open Champion playing partner, and goes red on her…and him.

Fowler and McIlroy, who played together for the first three days, will finally part ways tomorrow – Rory to play with Sergio at the un-champion-like time of 5:40 AM CST and Fowler to tee it up with Thomas Bjorn at 8:00 AM CST, just in time for America to wake up for its future which currently sits three strokes back of the leader.

We haven’t been able to celebrate a major winning golfer since Lefty got bleary eyed with Amy in Augusta some 400+ days ago at a private course in north Georgia. We’ve endured two straight Northern Irishmen winning our country’s open championship and have only returned the favor once since Tiger went back-to-back in 2005 and 2006.

So maybe America is due too. It’s the perfect storm: my tweet jinxes, Fowler’s 2nd place finishes, America needing this!

Make no mistake, young Ricky is the future of the sport in our great land, and not just because of his loud clothes and social media powerhouse-ness. No, he’s got a some game, and wouldn’t it be metaphorical for him to answer McIlroy’s bloodbath at Congressional with his own first major on Rory’s own turf. “I see your title, Rory, and I will raise it many times in the next twenty years.”

On Sunday we’ll see what he has left in the tank to close with or if he emptied it all on Saturday, washed away with the bitter weather. We’ll see how much he really likes links golf and we’ll see if that top 15 finish last year at St. Andrews was just an aberration. And we’ll see him in orange, like a neon pylon sticking straight out of the British countryside, and we’ll smile because he represents OSU very well.

And we’ll hope he sips champagne from the Claret Jug later that night.