Rickie Fowler Takes A Wild Ride At Mayakoba Classic

The Mayakoba Resort may want to feature a new thrill ride — 18 holes with Rickie Fowler.

The road has been pretty bumpy for Rickie Fowler this season and the way things are in today’s world, we might say “Welcome To The Club” but Thursday’s first round for Rickie at El Camaleon was like a chameleon — it kept changing colors.

Rickie was off early for his Mexican Adventure.  it was windy and wet at El Camaleon and they were allowed to play “Lift-Clean-And-Place” in the fairways otherwise it would have been a Mud Ball Buffet.  Things were looking really good for Rickie after his birdie-birdie start.  Then he stepped up to the 451-yard par four 12th and didn’t catch his drive all that poorly.  “Really didn’t make a bad swing,” was how Rickie described it.  “Made a decent swing with driver, just got it a little bit on the toe and it started moving and got on the other side of the wind. As you know, it was a little breezy out there this morning.”

Rickie’s drive sailed into an area inhabited by unknown creatures and it was the start of a really bad hole.  By the time he holed out, he took a quadruple bogey eight.  Snowman!  “I was really just trying to get out of that hole the best that I could with being out of position,” was how Rickie described the catastrophe.

Now that Mexican Snowman would rattle most but Rickie bounced back with birdie on the 13th, his fourth of the day.  He stumbled and made bogey at 14 but cancelled that one out with a birdie at the 16th and making the turn one-over with an eight on your card was a pretty good bounce-back.

But the number 12 was unlucky for Rickie.  The quad came at the 12th then at the par four third, Rickie’s 12th hole of the day, he hit another wayward drive that resulted in a double-bogey on the short (389-yard) par four.  Three-over.

Undaunted, Rickie proceeded to birdie four of his final six holes and ACTUALLY FINISHED UNDER PAR with a 70 — one-under.

“There’s a lot of trouble on this golf course,” Rickie reminded himself.  “Trouble on both sides.  I salvaged what could have been a really bad day.

“I think prior to this,” Fowler added, “it was one of my best days with some big numbers — I mean, Augusta (first round in 2013), I doubled 1 and I doubled 10 and shot 68.  This has to be the lowest I’ve shot with a quad, though. That doesn’t happen a whole lot.”

According to PGA Tour stats, this was the first time in 885 career PGA Tour rounds that Fowler has ever shot under par while making a double bogey and an “other.”  In this case, the “other” was the Mexican Snowman at 12.

To make it even a bit more amazing was the fact that Fowler was still able to beat the two biggest names in the field this week — Justin Thomas and Brooks Koepka.

Thomas was in the early wave with Fowler and all he could come up with was a one-over  par round of 72.

In the afternoon, Koepka’s driving wasn’t anything you’d want to talk about.  He had the left miss going and by the time he missed a 12-footer for birdie on his final hole, the 18th, he signed for an even par round of 71.

But there was no round like Rickie’s — he played 15 holes in eight-under par, three holes in seven-over.  Eight birdies, the Snowman, a double and a bogey.  He hit six of 14 fairways, 12 of 18 greens and had 24 putts.

Rickie needs to pick up the pace this week.  He’s 48th in the world and needs to hold steady or move up at clinch a spot in The Masters and those wonderful WGC events for next year.

Too many thrill rides on the PGA Tour can drive you nuts.

Perhaps Rickie can shoot a nice, boring 65 on Friday.

Mayakoba Classic Scoreboard: