Now he moves onto St. Andrews and will be most certainly one of the favorites to get his first major title.
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Fowler’s victory was impressive for a number of reason, the foremost being the fact that he never held the lead in the tournament until his birdie putt on 18 dropped.
“I had to dig deep”.
Justin Rose says he’s been impressed with the consistency of Rory McIlroy, Rickie Fowler and Jordan Spieth since they emerged on the golfing scene. It may be possible for Fowler to rise to the top five in the Open Championship ranking in the coming week.
Perhaps that should be revised. Fowler had found the fairway bunker on the 14th and leaked a shot but responded superbly with birdies at the 15th and 16th to stay in the hunt.
When asked how Kuchar will react to Fowler edging him out, Fowler said “I think we’ll be OK”. “Worked out just fine”.
“To win on a links golf course, my favorite style of golf, in Scotland and the week before the Open and going to St. Andrews, the home of golf is great timing”, he said.
Brooks won the Madeira Islands Open in May 2014, a tournament restricted to 36 holes and marred by the death of a caddie, but he is in uncharted territory this week given the standard of a field looking to gain links practice ahead of the British Open. But he had to wait for the final pairing of France’s Raphael Jacquelin and England’s Daniel Brooks to play the last before really celebrating.
The second round saw Hatton card a round of one-under before he endured his toughest 18 holes of the event in the third round on Saturday.
The Frenchman nearly pulled it off, the ball spinning to within a foot of the hole, but Fowler was able to breathe a sigh of relief watching on a television monitor.
But he was tied 20th in Paris and then continued that form into the Scottish Open.
The final spot went to Sweden’s Rikard Karlberg, who shot a brilliant final round 64, including a 31 on the back nine to finish T10. He was tied for seventh with Luke Donald (66) and Ross Fisher (68).
Other notables over the weekend at Gullane were those finishing just 2 off the winning score – Joost Luiten (becoming a star on the World golfing stage); Eddie Pepperell and Scot, Marc Warren.
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Fowler will now hope to emulate the last American to win the Scottish Open, Phil Mickelson tasting victory at Castle Stuart in 2013 before going on to win the Open at Muirfield. However, he was able to recover in time as he finished with three birdies and a par to win his first European Tour. I said “I’ll see if I can take care of the first leg of it” so now I’ve got that done.
