THE MEMORIAL TOURNAMENT PRESENTED BY NATIONWIDE

June 6, 2021

Rickie Fowler

Muirfield Village

Quick Quotes

Q. What kind of attitude do you feel like you have to take to qualify?

RICKIE FOWLER: Just go get some good food tonight, get some good sleep, rest up. It will be a long day. Hopefully we can dodge some rain and storms in the afternoon. Other than that, it's just about kind of just move forward. I did a pretty good job of that this week, a few mistakes. It's bound to happen at this place. But tomorrow we're playing at golf courses that are maybe a little less demanding than a place like Memorial or Muirfield. But, no, just move forward, keep going.

Q. Do you embrace this? Do you see this as an opportunity in some ways?

RICKIE FOWLER: Yeah, well, I mean, because, I mean, obviously, I didn't qualify off of points or World Rankings for the U.S. Open, so go out tomorrow, have a chance to go qualify and get myself a spot, a tee time in a week and a half time from now, but if not it wasn't on the schedule because I didn't qualify already. So we'll see what we can go do tomorrow and it will be a bonus if we get to go play Torrey Pines.

Q. Top-10 PGA, do you feel like you are trending?

RICKIE FOWLER: Heading the right way. Tillery and myself and the team put in plenty of work over quite awhile. It took some time for it to kind of start kicking in, but put plenty of time in on the swing and kind of how the body was working, and then the past three, four months it's been more just focusing on playing golf, hitting shots, kind of got everything out of the way and took care of that. It was just get back to play golf. I mean, you can't go out there and play golf swing. So that's where it's kind of been starting to come together with a little extra work I've been doing on putting to get that back. It's nice to have some confidence again. That was something that made the last year and a half even worse. I didn't have the flat stick to save me. So everything started to come around. Definitely happy about the last few tournaments, just the start of it going forward.

Q. Is one part of your game you really want to have working tomorrow, would it be putting? You want to hole as many putts, right, as possible?

RICKIE FOWLER: I mean putting, if I make a bunch of putts, that would be great. Definitely rolled it nice today. I was hitting my lines, felt like a lot better on speed versus yesterday. I would say another big part is driving the ball well. Get the ball in play and then it's putting for birdie, not trying to save par.

Q. What was your reaction to Jon Rahm's situation?

RICKIE FOWLER: I mean, definitely unfortunate to see the way that he played the first three days. Everything that's been put in place by the TOUR, kind of all the rules and regulations that aren't just from the TOUR but from the government and CDC, it really just sucks on the timing of it. I mean, there's no real other way to put it. I'm glad I was not in that position. Luckily I got vaccinated. But, yeah, I just, I feel it for Jon. It's just a bummer.

Q. Are you at all surprised you didn't have more of that? I mean, when you think back on a year of this it's been very few instances.

RICKIE FOWLER: Yeah. No, because we talked about it early only. With JT being on the PAC and Jordan being on the board, there was a lot of stuff that I heard that they talked about behind closed doors of, well, what happens if someone tested on, having to test positive on Saturday that was leading? And, yeah, it's a very small chance, and to think that we have been at it for basically a year now and this is the first time it's happened of anyone being remotely in contention, one, pretty impressive on that part. It's a bummer that it's happened now.

Q. I want to go back to 2008. You went through final qualifying to get to the U.S. Open. Am I right there?

RICKIE FOWLER: Yes.

Q. Can you go back to that moment and what that was like for you to go through the process and go to Torrey Pines to play?

RICKIE FOWLER: Yeah, I was actually reminded a little bit more of the story. So it was Brookside, which I'll be playing tomorrow morning, and then over at OSU's course. It was in a playoff. Ended up being, Tuesday morning, ended up being first alternate, which if you're going to be first alternate, one of the two TOUR sites is your best chance. So I was optimistic and I got the call and got a tee time at Torrey Pines. So it's happened before, might as well go see what we can do tomorrow.