PGA Tour star Rickie Fowler is experiencing a rash of mixed feelings this week at the 2026 Rocket Classic.
While he opened the event with one of his best rounds of the season on Thursday, Fowler did so while coming to terms with a difficult fact.
Following this week the Rocket Classic, the tournament that arguably saved Fowler’s career, will be no more, a victim of a fleeing sponsor and the PGA Tour’s new vision for its schedule.
Fowler tried to balance those two competing realities during his post-round press conference on Thursday at Detroit Golf Club.
How Rocket Classic saved Rickie Fowler’s career
For some essential perspective, we have to rewind to the 2022-2023 season. At that point in his career, Fowler had five PGA Tour wins, but his last one had come four years earlier, in 2019.
In the years in between, Fowler had struggled mightily. He finished 134th in the 2020-21 FedEx Cup standings and 133rd in 2022. To many, it looked as if Fowler’s promising career had come to an end early.
Then Fowler forged a major comeback. In the fall of 2022, he recorded two top-10 finishes and added five more by June of 2023.
In July of that year, at what was then known as the Rocket Mortgage Classic, Fowler completed his return to prominence at Detroit Golf Club with his sixth Tour victory.
“It’s just nice to have this one out of the way,” Fowler said after his win in 2023. “It’s just been a long road.”
That road has now led him back to the Rocket Classic, as the tournament prepares to exit its own journey on the PGA Tour.
Rickie Fowler in hunt at final Rocket Classic: ‘A little bittersweet’
While Fowler has yet to add another win since his 2023 victory at Detroit Golf Club, he’s played much better since then.
He finished 32nd in the FedEx Cup standings last season, just missing out on the Tour Championship. Heading into this week’s Rocket Classic, he was stuck in the same spot, 32nd.
But if his play on Thursday is a sign of things to come, Fowler will move into the top 30 in a matter of days. He shot a seven-under 63 in the opening round to get within two shots of the early lead.
After his round, he mourned the end of the event, which he said had “kept getting bigger and better.”
“It’s definitely been a bummer to kind of come into this [Rocket Classic] knowing it was the last one,” Fowler said. “It’s been fun for me to have a partnership with Rocket and see this event make its way here because that was always a dream of theirs to have an event back in Detroit, and to see it continue to grow over the years, felt like it just kept getting bigger and better. This being I think the best that they’ve done continuously.”
While he’s enjoying the week and his fine play on the course, Fowler admitted it was “bittersweet” given the end of the tournament that has meant so much to him.
“It is a bummer, but it’s been a lot of fun, like I said, to be a part of it. Fans have always been great to me here and having the association with Rocket, but I think the win in ’23 helped solidify that,” Fowler said. “Yeah, this has always been a fun week for us and a little bittersweet.”
There would be no better way to honor the occasion than for Fowler to end another winless drought on Sunday at the final Rocket Classic.
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