DETROIT — Rickie Fowler’s winning putt on the first playoff hole Sunday had great pace, but seemingly took forever to get there.

It’d been over four years since his last win. That was 2019 in Phoenix, a victory that came amid the 289 weeks, from mid-2014 to January 2020, Fowler spent inside the world’s top 25. A remarkable stretch of consistency including 206 weeks in the top 10. He reached a high of No. 4 in the winter of 2016. He was, at the time, the frontman of the PGA Tour’s band of young talent and signed the kind of sponsorship deals that come with being a rock star pro athlete.

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Then the ride slowed. Or ended, depending how you looked at it. From the start of 2021 to early 2023, Fowler spent 132 weeks outside the top 50 in the world. He went from top-five finishes in all four majors in 2014 to one top-20 major finish between 2019 and the start of 2023. A new flock of young stars, all bigger, taller, stronger and longer than the 5-foot-9, 150-pound Fowler, raced past. He was still one of the most recognizable and well-liked players in golf — or in any sport, really — but results were nonexistent. All those lucrative sponsorships began looking absurd. Last summer, Rocket Mortgage, a longtime backer, was strongly considering letting a five-year contract with Fowler expire in March 2023 without renewing, according to multiple people briefed on the matter. Other sponsors were likely considering the same.

Things have come a long way since. Organizers of the Rocket Mortgage Classic leaned close Sunday, desperate to see Fowler win their signature event.

All along, somewhat inexplicably, Fowler’s support never much waned. Fans love Fowler. They scream for him, adore him. They dress like him. Why? It’s not totally clear. This cannot only be because Fowler is marketable or handsome or interesting. Or because he was a captivating young talent a decade ago. Or because he signs every autograph, every time, no matter what. There’s more at play here.

So, why? Why, on Sunday, as Fowler, a 34-year-old with zero major victories on his resume, walked toward the 18th green at Detroit Golf Club, did a massive, rain-drenched gallery chant his name? Why did fans ignore Collin Morikawa, a 26-year-old with two majors and an abundantly bright future? Why did they ignore Adam Hadwin, a likable Canadian who went viral a few weeks ago when tackled by a security guard?

Why did everyone in Detroit, and everywhere else, want Rickie to win?

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It’s because there’s something about him.

Something about Fowler that despite the commercials and money and fame feels authentic.

Murrieta Valley Golf Range, about 90 minutes south of Los Angeles, was open from 7 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on Sunday. Golfers of all shapes and sizes came and went, as they do. They dropped down large buckets, hacked away. Ninety balls still go for $12 at Murrieta Valley. Can’t do much better than that, especially with fifty stalls of natural grass bays and a short game area.

The range opened in 1992 when Bill Teasdall, a former mini-tour pro with PGA Tour dreams, partnered with Barry McDonnell, a teaching pro. Bill found the land, leased the 15-acre property and built the range. It included a teaching stall for Barry. Bill owned Murrieta Valley, but considered Barry a “partner.” In truth, Barry wanted no part of the business side of the operation, but Bill wanted it to belong to him, too.

“It was his dream as much as it was mine,” Bill says all this time later.

Resilient Rickie.

The hard work has paid off for @RickieFowler @RocketClassic 🏆

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) July 2, 2023

Barry was a third-generation club pro. He learned the game from his Scottish grandfather. He saw the golf swing as a product of the individual. He told Golf Channel in 2009: “I have a bunch of kids I work with, and I don’t try to make them all look alike. Golf is more an art form than a science.”

Barry was old-school. He took Mondays off. He began each day with a cup of coffee in the golf shop. He gave four lessons a day, at most. Oftentimes, lessons would consist of Barry talking to students about life. The golf swing was incidental. Barry was, Bill says, “a philosopher.” He didn’t answer the phone. He didn’t return messages. If someone wanted lessons, his or her best bet was to practice at Murrieta and work on their game.

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“Eventually,” Bill says, “Barry would go wander over and take interest. That’s when the lessons would start.”

It wasn’t long after construction was completed at Murrieta that Barry told Bill of his dream.

“He says to me, he says, ‘Ya know, Bill, I’ve worked with young guys, been to tour school with guys, and I know what it takes to make it through tour school. All I need now is a young kid with some talent and I’ll take him all the way there.”

That was October of 1992.

In December of 1992, a 3-year-old Rickie Fowler walked into Murrieta Valley Golf Range with his grandpa. Young Rickie hit a bucket. Then he came back the next day and hit another bucket. Then his parents asked if the range offered any lessons. They signed up with one of the range’s pros, Mark Quinlan. He taught Rickie for the next year or so before moving on.

Barry took over.

A year or two later, Barry pulled Bill aside. He said, “This kid is the one.”

“And I said, Jesus, Barry, he’s only 8!” Bill says.

Rickie was breaking 70 by the time he was 12. Junior trophies piled up. By the time he was 14, Barry set out to work not on Rickie’s game, but his brain. He wanted his young prodigy to be unflappable. Day after day after day, they met at Barry’s teaching stall and went to work. A wall in the pro shop was dedicated to Fowler’s amateur achievements.

In time, as they do, the kid grew up. Rickie went to Oklahoma State, but the bond with Barry remained. When Fowler hit a rough patch early in his college career, OSU coach Mike McGraw asked Barry and Bill to come out to Stillwater. Barry didn’t particularly want the hassle of flying and traveling, but Bill convinced him by saying, simply, “It’s Rick.” When they arrived, Bill sat and hung out with McGraw so Barry could be alone with Rickie.

McGraw was fascinated, watching from afar. He turned to Bill and, lowering his voice, asked what Barry was going to work on with Rick. Looking back at McGraw, Bill shook his head.

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“Not much.”

Barry did his thing. He talked to Rickie. He asked how he was doing. He pointed out this, brought attention to that. They spent a few hours together.

Then Fowler went out and won a tournament the next week.

Barry, at this point, was already well into his 70s. Bill asked him one day when Fowler was away at school, “If you’re not around later, what’s going to happen to Rick?” Barry had a quick answer. No matter what, Rickie should work with famed teaching pro Butch Harmon.

“Butch won’t change him,” Barry told Bill.

Not long after, on May 24, 2011, Barry McDonnell died of a heart attack. He lived long enough to see Fowler named 2010 PGA Tour Rookie of the Year and chosen as a U.S. captain’s pick in the Ryder Cup.

As for Murrieta Valley Golf Range, time moved forward. Different kids. Different pros. Buckets on grass. A massive California pepper tree stands on one end of the range, not far from where young Rickie learned his swing. Barry planted it soon after opening the place so that it might provide some shade. The Schinus molle is known to grow to five stories tall with a deep, expansive root system. The one at Murrieta Valley is today known as “Barry’s Tree.”

So this is where Rickie Fowler’s swing was born. But what is a golf swing? It’s a contradiction. It’s one’s body of work. And it’s one’s body at work. It’s inherent. And it’s learned.

Fowler’s swing is all his own, but also a product of serendipity. That Bill built his range in Murrieta. That Barry was there to sculpt a 5-year-old’s swing. In 2011, after Barry’s death, Fowler said: “I think about him pretty much every day or any day I’m on the golf course just because I have so many life lessons and golf lessons ingrained in my head from him. He was the biggest influence in my life outside of direct friends and family.”

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Rickie ended up taking Barry’s advice. He teamed up with Butch Harmon in 2014. When Fowler was back at Murrieta Valley soon after, Bill sat and watched him hit a few balls. Then he asked the inevitable question.

How are things with Butch?

“I really like him,” Fowler told Bill. “He’s just like Barry. He doesn’t say much.”

However, despite the success, Fowler moved on from Harmon in 2019. Then came “the struggles,” as Rickie refers to them. Fowler posted only two top-10 finishes combined in 2020 and 2021, while missing 15 cuts. At home, he and wife Allison Stokke welcomed their first child in November 2021, but on the course, he was estranged from his game.

“You don’t really understand it or get it until you’ve really been in the position,” Fowler says now. “You do feel the outside, whether it’s support or the other side. Going through struggles you hear both sides of it. It’s amazing to have the following that I’ve had and the people that have always been in my corner and pulled for me, supported me. But you also deal with the other side.”

Something had to change and, in the 2022 offseason, Fowler parted ways with long-time caddie Joe Skovron, replacing him with Ricky Romano, a childhood friend from Murrieta.

Then he re-hired Harmon.

Early on, their work was primarily done over video, Butch getting clips of and sending along tweaks. He changed the plane of Fowler’s arm. He opted for more hip turn. On and on. Soon, Rickie Fowler started to look like Rickie Fowler again.

This past April, after Fowler did not qualify for the Masters, Harmon said on a podcast with his son, Claude Harmon: “I guarantee you he will win this year — that’s how good he’s playing. He’s got tremendous confidence again. His game is there.”

Three months later, Fowler stood over a putt in Detroit with a chance to prove Butch right.

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And Barry, too.

As Rickie Fowler played in a high school tournament sometime during the 2006-07 school year, his mother, Lynn, walked along a fairway with Bill Teasdall. She revealed the grand plan.

“You know,” Lynn said to Bill, “Rickie told me he’s going to become a successful tour pro, make millions, then return to Murrieta and buy the range from you.”

While it sounded like a helluva retirement plan, Bill didn’t exactly bank on it. Rickie was a teenager.

But, 15 years later …

“I’ll be damned, Rick went and won the Players Championship and I get a phone call from his agent, telling me Rick will buy this place whenever I’m ready to retire,” Bill says.

That was 2015. Bill wasn’t quite ready. So he held onto Murrieta Valley, kept clocking in every day, kept stocking the pro shop. He was ready to sell around 2019, but then the pandemic hit and plans were put on hold.

But then came this past fall. Rickie, 34, and Bill, 74, made it official.

Fowler bought his old driving range in November. The sale was finalized in January.

“It’s a special place and I’m not changing it,” Fowler says now. “We’ll upgrade things, improve things, but it’s going to be the same place for today’s kids that it was for me.”

Fowler put KemperSports, a golf hospitality management company, in place for daily management, but is otherwise leaving the staff exactly as it was. Bill is only semi-retired and still kicks around the place. Lisa D’Hondt has worked at the front counter for almost 30 years and remembers when Rickie was “3-foot tall and swinging his dad’s driver, whacking away.” She can have the job as long as she wants it. Asked what’s different with Rickie Fowler as her boss, she scoffed.

“Nothing, and I think that’s the point,” D’Hondt said. “He doesn’t really want any change.”

When Murrieta Valley comes up in conversation, Fowler goes from tour pro to general manager. The place has a couple things it needs to get up to code, he explains. A few handicap spots here and there. He needs to raise the netting to protect some bordering homes. Plans are in place to redo the tee line this summer. He recently bought a piece of property along the corner of the range on auction from the city with plans to move and expand the short game there.

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“We’re going to invest into to make sure that it’s to its full potential,” Fowler says. “But that’s it. I still want it to be the range that I grew up on.”

Fowler’s purchase of Murrieta Valley has mostly gone under the radar. Purposefully so. He doesn’t want much credit. “That’s how Rick has always been,” says Romano. “He was that way since we were kids. He was always kind of a flat-liner.”

It’s not hard to figure out where he might’ve gotten that from.

“Barry was low-key,” Bill Teasdall says. “He didn’t want any accolades. But, you know, the truth is, he made Rickie Fowler.”

Fowler doesn’t forget any of this. Never has. Years ago he tattooed Barry McDonnell’s signature onto the inside of his left wrist. Now he’s gone and bought a whole damn driving range as a way to keep intact the most tangible part of his life in this game. He did what everyone who grew up pounding balls on a range imagines they might do one day. In a world that has made him one of this game’s most public figures, he preserved the place where he is himself.

That’s as real as it gets.

As Fowler’s final putt fell on Sunday, giving him a win in the Rocket Mortgage Classic, giving fans reason to break their prayerful silence with a roar, giving media something to latch onto, old Rickie placed both hands atop the club and sort of … paused. He looked up like he was trying to memorize the sky. The moment was his.

A man remembering where he’s been.

(Top photo: Cliff Hawkins / Getty Images)