ORLANDO – Eight years have passed since Rickie Fowler made a special trip to Arnold Palmer’s Bay Hill Club & Lodge. At the urging of his swing coach Butch Harmon and his manager, Sam MacNaughton, Fowler asked to have lunch with Palmer to break the news that he was going to skip the 2016 Arnold Palmer Invitational as part of his plan to prepare for that spring’s Masters.
“It was one of the hardest lunches,” Fowler said. “It felt like I was going to break up with a girlfriend.”
Fowler waited more than halfway through the meal before he got the gumption to do the dirty deed. Fowler still remembers Pralmer’s face forming a frown and his one-word response: “Why?”
“He wasn’t too thrilled,” Fowler said.
But even that moment showed the now-35-year-old Fowler’s great respect for Palmer, an iconic figure in the game, who as Fowler put it, “I’ve never heard anyone say anything bad about him.”
Here’s what Fowler learned from Palmer and some of his favorite interactions.