LOS ANGELES – Ricky Fowler didn’t learn to love the game at a country club; He got his business on the field in Murrieta, California, with Barry McDonnell, his first coach.
McDonnell, who died in 2011 at the age of 75, was a major influence on Fowler’s life—his signature was Fowler’s first tattoo—and Fowler’s parents trusted him to teach their son, often dropping him off at the range to learn under McDonnell and pick him up. in the dark.
“I spent almost as much time with him as I did growing up with my own family,” Fowler said.
One of the lessons McDonnell taught Fowler was how to run the ball both ways and be creative with his shot, which Fowler talked about on a GOLF Subpar Podcast appearance in 2020. McDonnell was old school, Fowler said, and he probably didn’t. I don’t know how to use a camcorder to record and watch Fowler’s swing anyway.
“It was a lot of, ‘Get out and hit the shots,’” Fowler said. “If I was drawing it too much or chopping it too much, it would be like, ‘Okay, hit a few hooks and see where we get from there.’” He kind of dug it out of the dirt. “
Fowler said this approach helped him learn the basics without becoming too mechanical.
Like, if you were sitting there, he’d say, ‘Let’s hit the tie from this pin to here,’ because the band I grew up with is pretty flat. There are some pins, but luckily it’s all grass, so you’re getting the real impact, you’re not hitting a rug. Just learn how to hit golf putts.
“It’s not necessarily teaching, he continued, ‘Well, you have to be in this position to do it.’” He continued, “It’s like, ‘Well, you have to hit it from here and make it go there, figure it out.’ So once I got to the golf course and even today, Sometimes I go back to thinking swing ideas are out the window. … I think that was a good thing it taught me to visualize and be able to putt when you’re out there on the golf course trying to imagine those things when there’s really nothing to watch.”
You can follow the final round of the US Open here, as Fowler hunts for his first career title.