Why Is Pro Golfer Rickie Fowler Not Playing in the Masters Tournament?
Rickie Fowler began his professional golf career in 2009 and has gone on to have great success playing in various championships and tournaments.
Published April 11 2025, 1:28 p.m. ET
The Masters is the holy grail of tournaments within the golf world, as the best of the best compete for the ultimate title — however, not all professional golfers earn a spot, such as Rickie Fowler.
Rickie began his professional golf career in 2009 and has gone on to have great success playing in the Masters Tournament, PGA Tour, U.S. Open and The Open Championship.
Why is Rickie Fowler not playing in the Masters?
After delighting fans in 2024 with his return to the tournament due to winning the 2023 Rocket Mortgage Classic, Rickie had to step aside for the 2025 Masters because of his current ranking.
According to Golf.com, he has fallen to 110th place, which is his worst ranking since 2022. He could turn things around next year and make a grand return, but golf experts note how far he’s fallen in recent years, per Gollf Digest 75.
What has Rickie said about his recent golf performance?
Per Newsweek, Rickie spoke about his performance at the 2025 Cognizant Classic. "Yeah, a little slow coming out," he said of the tournament that tied him for fifth place with Jake Knapp.
"Birdied our first at 10 but missed a few short ones. Sitting there even par through seven holes, and there's guys out there that were 5, 6-under pretty early. Just had to kind of stay patient. I was doing a lot of things well, just wasn't piecing things together."
"One poor swing on 14 and missed a few short ones," Rickie continued. "So finally birdied 17 and 18 to make the turn and get things going. Yeah, nice to get something on the back and make a few coming in to try and get as close to a 59 as possible, so we're not too far behind the 8-ball."
"Yeah, 59 anywhere is hard to do," he added. "I don't care if you go play from 6,500 yards. You still have to make putts. You still have to hit it close enough to have those opportunities. With this place, we've seen some low scores, guys get after it when the conditions are right. But obviously no one has shot 59 before out here."
What was his response to winning the 2023 Rocket Mortgage Classic?
“It’s just nice to have this one out of the way. I’m obviously going to soak this one in and celebrate a bit … it’s been a long road,” Rickie said after his victory, per CNN.
“It was tough just because everything else in my life was amazing, and then to have the one thing that I obviously love doing … it was kind of the missing link,” he continued. “So to have everything start to click and come together, and obviously all this started prior to Maya being born, it’s been an amazing ride.
“To finally get one finished off, Maya may or may not really ever remember it, but at least we’ll have some special images to help her remember today,” Rickie said.