OHL Classic Recap: Kizzire Bests Fowler

With apologies to Kizzire family, Rickie Fowler should've won the OHL Classic at Mayakoba.
But it was Patton Kizzire who earned his first PGA Tour win on Sunday, outdueling the far more accomplished Fowler over a marathon 36 holes of golf.

The pair began the day tied at the halfway point of the rain-delayed tournament. Kizzire edged in front by one after the third round. Things were largely decided at the start of the final round, when Kizzire picked up three strokes on Fowler in the first five holes, opening a four-shot margin. It dwindled to one by the time they came to 18, but a pair of pars settled matters.

"We gave it a run, kept Patton honest, but he earned it out there today," Fowler told reporters on the scene, apparently thinking that birdieing 16 and 17 constitutes a significant "run."

Look, Fowler is clearly one of the best golfers in the world; he's fantasy gold. He moved from 10th in the world to seventh after his runner-up. The Golf Channel showed a graphic that said Fowler led the PGA Tour last season in top-fives, top-25s, strokes gained total, strokes gained putting, scoring average and birdie average.

But golfers are judged on wins, and Fowler barely wins. And to not win when he was at or on top of the leaderboard all week, against perhaps the weakest field he'll be in all season, is a red flag. Kizzire is no cupcake, the 2015 Web.com Tour Player of the Year now with three straight top-10s, but c'mon.

Fowler, 28, won once last season, at the Honda Classic, but he has only four wins, none of them majors, in almost 200 career starts. We all know that Justin Thomas won five times last year alone. Clearly, Fowler would trade a bunch of those high finishes for some highest finishes.

In fairness, golf is not like most other sports; there's no defense. You can't stop your opponent, at least in the traditional sense. But the elite golfers have mastered the art of defense – they are mentally tough and hit good golf shot after good golf shot, sometimes demoralizing their opponent.

They say Fowler is the nicest guy on the Tour, always making time for kids, fans, sponsors, whomever, universally liked by his peers. They say largely the same thing about Phil Mickelson, and he has almost 50 worldwide wins, five of them majors.

Fowler is and will continue one of the top fantasy options. Probably for years. But those near-misses cost his backers, most recently on Sunday, either in DFS points or season-long earnings. The larger point, in real golf, is that it's stunning that one of the best golfers in the world barely wins.

If it's bothering Fowler, he doesn't show it. If it's not bothering him, that's a problem.

MONDAY BACKSPIN

Patton Kizzire
Three seasons ago, Kizzire emerged as the top golfer on the Web.com Tour. He finished second in his first start as a PGA Tour member and fourth the next week. That's quite a beginning. But Kizzire cooled quickly, falling from inside the top-100 to almost No. 300 just last month. Now, after a T10 at the Sanderson, a T4 at the Shriners and this win, he's back to No. 119. It's quite an accomplishment, what he did the last three weeks and beating Fowler over 36 holes. But Kizzire has always done his best work in the fall, when fields are weaker. His win will get him into bigger tournaments; let's see what he does with the opportunity.

Si Woo Kim
Kim closed with a six-under 65 to move into solo third. He is now up to a career-best 39th in the OWGR. Clearly, when Kim is on, he's can win in any field, as he showed by capturing The Players Championship in May. But for anyone who has rostered Kim only to be burned by all of his WDs – six of them last season – it's hard to forget and hard to start him. He's now made seven straight cuts and can add to it this week at the RSM Classic. But his last WD wasn't too long ago, and in a big tournament – the PGA Championship.

Patrick Rodgers
Rodgers was in the final group with Kizzire and Fowler, all sharing the lead entering the third round. Rodgers ended up nine shots back to finish in a tie for 14th. The former top-ranked amateur was targeted for greatness upon turning pro in 2014, but he's now gone 87 tournaments without a win. Plus, it had to sting to have a front-row seat for the Kizzire breakthrough win. Rodgers cracked the top-100 in the OWGR briefly in 2015, but it's apparent he won't reach the heights expected of him. That doesn't mean he won't win – he probably will at some point. Good luck guessing when that will be.

J.J. Spaun
Spaun kicked away the lead last week at the Shriners with a double-double finish. The fact that he rebounded with T14 at Mayakoba, albeit with a closing 70 that was his worst round of the week, bodes well. A lot of golfer would've had a hard time putting such a heartbreaking finish into the past so quickly.

Graeme McDowell
McDowell is now ranked 159th in the OWGR, his lowest standing in more than 13 years. After missing his final four PGA cuts last season, McDowell has actually run off six cashes in a row – three in Europe and three in the U.S., including a T34 at Mayakoba. McDowell has actually been going steadily down the rankings while on this cut streak. That's the complicated OWGR for you. But in his only RSM start in the past five years, he tied for third in 2016. If you need someone to make a cut, he might be a decent low-priced option this week.

Mac Hughes
Sometime since becoming last year's surprise RSM winner and now, Mackenzie Hughes became Mac Hughes. It was probably recent but we really didn't notice, because Hughes hasn't contended in a tournament since then. He had only one more top-10, though he did grab a bunch of top-25s. He's back to defend this week, having started the season with two missed cuts. It's tough for a young player to return to a tournament as a defending champion, and another missed cut would not be surprising at all.

Patrick Reed
Reed missed the cut. But instead of beginning his offseason two rounds early, Reed jetted off to Dubai. On one level it's admirable that Reed wants dual membership with the European Tour, and the season-ending DP World Tour Championship has a strong field. But selfishly for gamers, Reed's globetrotting and infrequent weeks off are detriments. He's won five times in 156 PGA starts – better than Fowler but not great for a supposed elite golfer. He hasn't won in more than two years. He has one career top-10 in majors. If he wants to win more, he needs to rethink his schedule.

Sangmoon Bae
It's been a tough time for Bae, just back after a two-year military commitment in South Korea. Bae missed the cut for the third time in four starts last week, and the one cash was a T61 (at least it was at the CJ Cup in his home country). After being in the original RSM field, Bae withdrew on Monday morning. We won't see him on the PGA Tour till at least January, but we'll be monitoring whether he plays in Asia during the long Tour break.

Brandt Snedeker
Snedeker will return to the Tour this week after being idle since June with a wrist injury. There are at least three possible reasons why he'll be back this week: 1) He's healthy. 2) He wants to test his wrist in the last tournament before January. 3) He is dangerously close to falling out of the top-50 in the world rankings (47th). It's probably not a big deal for Snedeker, but you always want to be in the top-50 at year's end. Snedeker has played Sea Island three times but never finished in the top-30.

Branden Grace
Grace has endured a sub-par year, one that had seen him fall from No. 17 in the world in January to outside the top-40. On Sunday, Grace won the biggest tournament of his career -- the second European Tour playoff event, the Nedbank Golf Challenge in his native South Africa, which he called, "Africa's major." Grace has done everything but win an actual major the past three years, with five top-six cashes. He's now back up to No. 29 in the world.

RotoWire Value Picks

Last week: Winner (Cantlay), four top-25s, three missed cuts
This week: … Runner-up (Fowler), two top-fives, seven top-25s, five missed cuts, one WD

This was an all-or-nothing week. We had seven guys finish in the top-25 and six guys who didn't finish. Beginning in Tier 1, Fowler was a no-brainer pick. High-priced Chez Reavie tied for 14th, defending champion Pat Perez tied for 34th, and Chesson Hadley unfortunately withdrew with an illness after making the cut. In Tier 2, Charles Howell III delivered with a tie for fourth, as did Bryson DeChambeau with a tie for 14th. Also, Zach Johnson tied for 23rd, and Jason Kokrak tied for 45th. In Tier 3, ouch – McDowell tied for 34th, and he was the only one who made the cut (Luke List, Stewart Cink and Nick Taylor). Among the long shots, Spaun (T14) and Tyrone Van Aswegen (T25) did nicely, but Peter Malnati and Stephan Jaeger missed the cut.