How Butch Harmon helped Rickie Fowler get his groove back

At the Farmers Insurance Open in January, I told Rickie Fowler that instructor Butch Harmon had predicted at the PGA Merchandise Show to me that his star-crossed pupil, winless for nearly four years at the time and having returned to his former instructor just months ago, would end his drought this year.

“Did he say which week?” Fowler asked with a wry smile.

It turns out Butch was right again. It wasn’t the U.S. Open, where Fowler shot a record-breaking 62 and held the 54-hole lead two weeks ago, nor the Travelers Championship where he carded a third-round 60 but couldn’t keep pace with eventual champion Keegan Bradley. But the stars were aligned on Sunday in Detroit, where Fowler birdied the 72^nd hole to join a three-man playoff and birdied 18 again to win the Rocket Mortgage Classic.

“He’s the best golf coach out there,” Fowler said during his winner’s press conference shortly after defeating Adam Hadwin and Collin Morikawa in the playoff to earn his sixth career PGA Tour title. “He does a great job with players, taking what they have and ultimately making them the best that they can be with who they are and how they swing and making what they do well that much better and bring up the weaknesses.”

Fowler developed his flat, looping swing as a kid under the watchful eye of instructor Barry McDonnell, who taught at Murrieta Valley Golf Range in Murrieta, California. McDonnell died at age 75 in June 2011 at age 75 from complications related to a heart attack. Fowler spent the better part of the next two years without a coach but in December 2013, he hooked up with Harmon for the first time in an effort to boost his performance in the four majors. That year, Fowler finished in the top 5 in all of golf’s biggest championships with his re-tooled swing. He won the 2015 Players Championship and reached as high as No. 4 in the world but never broke through at a major.

Part of what has made Harmon an invaluable resource to top pros over the years is his willingness to call a spade a spade. The last thing pupils like Rickie, Phil or Tiger needed over the years under Harmon’s tutelage was another yes man. In 2017, Harmon recounted on Sky TV, where he worked as an analyst, that he gave Fowler some tough love.

“And he didn’t like it,” Harmon recalled. “I said, ‘You gotta decide are you going to be a Kardashian or are you going to be a golf pro?’ You’re the king of social media, you’re all over these Snapchats and all these things …

“You need to reach down and grab your ears and get your head out of your you know what and get back to work.”

Harmon remained in Fowler’s corner until he announced his retirement in 2019 and no longer was a regular presence at PGA Tour events.

“Our split was really just because he stopped traveling, and then things weren’t working the last few years,” Fowler said on Sunday.

He began working with instructor John Tillery, who had great success with Fowler’s friend Kevin Kisner. Fowler goes to great lengths in every interview to credit Tillery for teaching him many things during the ensuing years but the partnership didn’t bear fruit.

Fowler went 29 consecutive events without recording a top-10 finish, his ranking dropped to 185^th and he rarely qualified for major championships. His ball-striking stats plummeted outside the top 100 and devoting so much time to re-tooling his swing had an unforeseen consequence: his trusty putting stroke began misbehaving to such an extent that he fell outside the top 160 in 2022.

Rickie Fowler and his coach Butch Harmon on the 4th tee during Tuesday practice for the 144rd Open Championship at The Old Course at St. Andrews. (Steve Flynn-USA TODAY Sports)

To his credit, Fowler just kept his head down and soldiered on. He still signed every autograph and answered every media interview question wondering when he’d break out of his slump.

“He’s just stayed the same Rickie,” Max Homa said. “I think some people when they go through it, you kind of become like a shell of yourself and you go through maybe some mental torture when you’re playing golf.”

As tough as it was for Fowler’s fan base to stomach his dip in performance, it may have been toughest on Harmon.

“When Rickie went through his bas stretch, it was brutal to watch,” Harmon told Golf Digest. “I knew how good he could be, but his swing wasn’t producing. After a while, he lost his confidence, too. But he never wavered as a person, signing all the autographs, and giving his time. If the world was full of Rickie Fowlers, it would be one hell of a place.”

Fowler parted ways with Tillery in the fall and reconnected with Harmon. The results were instantaneous as Fowler finished T-6 at the Fortinet Championship in September and held the 54-hole lead at the Zozo Championship in October before faltering in the final round.

CBS lead analyst Trevor Immelman spent a couple of days with Fowler and Harmon in Las Vegas, where he lives and still teaches, during the Shriners Children’s Hospital Open and Butch walked Immelman through the changes. He loved what they were working on, and could see it bleeding in slowly on the golf course.

“Which is the last hurdle,” Immelman said. “It took a little while to unravel the knot.”

“Butch is great, just his voice and having him in your corner,” Fowler said during the U.S. Open. “Just telling you something to give you a little confidence to go out there and just go play golf and keep it simple.”

Simple to say, but harder to do. Nevertheless, Fowler’s game has been building to victory: 12 finishes inside the top 20 in his last 13 starts; impressive gains in nearly every statistical category; and back inside the top 50 in the world. (He jumped to No. 23 after the win.) Older and wiser, Fowler is married and a parent to Maya. He remains a darling of corporate America but his “Kardashian days” are behind him.

“It’s definitely been long and tough. A lot longer being in that situation than you’d ever want to,” Fowler said. “But it makes it so worth it having gone through that and being back where we are now.”