Rickie Fowler Dodges Bullet While Jordan Spieth Proves Critics Right With Torrey Pines Collapse
Meritocracy, but the sponsors will bail you out! Seems like the smart play is working for Rickie Fowler and Jordan Spieth just fine who have been making headlines for some time now. Unfortunately for them, most have been on the negative side of things. One that is still keeping their names on the front page is the sponsor exemption by Tiger Woods that landed them in the ongoing Genesis Invitational in Torrey Pines despite no justifiable reasons for the special benefits. Clearly, the men have more than one trick in their pockets.
For starters, Spieth has not yielded a win since the 2023 Rocket Mortgage Classic. Last season, the 31-year-old only had three top-10 performances and 14 cuts in 22 events and ended up 80th in the FedEx Cup rankings. In 2025, the two signature events he got into through the special exemptions got him to an unimpressive T69 ranking in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am with the tides turning for him in last weekend’s WM Phoenix Open where he finished T-4. He came close to winning at the Sentry last year but had to settle for the third position. Still, many would not even consider him a hot property in golf today. But his contacts have come in handy as he went straight to the green with the event he was disqualified from last season: The Genesis Invitational. Unsurprisingly to many, another ‘buddy’ of his from the ‘boys club’ is also enjoying the same treatment.
