Rickie Fowler doesn’t care what Johnny Miller thinks about his Honda Classic win

Johnny Miller — either you love him or can’t abide him for telling it how he sees it, and NBC’s lead golf analyst pulled no punches in assessing the way Rickie Fowler earned his runaway Honda Classic victory on Sunday.

“You’ve got to learn to finish out Sundays like a true champion,” Miller said about the way Fowler struggled to close out the win with back-to-back bogeys after a day of two-way misses off the tee and a whole lot of scuffling.

Entering Sunday’s finale four shots ahead of the field, Fowler seemed to have a lead comfortable enough to absorb some errors. The now ninth-ranked golfer in the world even alluded to that after Saturday’s 5-under round of 65.

“I do have a lot of work to do tomorrow, but it’s nice to give myself -- a four-shot lead is nice. That can obviously go away very quickly, too,” said Fowler. “When you do have that cushion, it gives you the opportunity to accept mistakes. If you’re playing from three, four shots behind, you can’t make a mistake. You can’t give up another shot to be four or five or six behind. When you’re out front, four shots, I make mistake, make a bogey; OK, we’re still up. Let’s keep moving forward and put that behind us.”

With that golfstradmus-like foreshadowing, perhaps it wasn’t so surprising that Fowler’s final round was filled with gaffes. There was the water ball that led to a double-bogey on the par-4 sixth and another splashdown on No. 17 — both of which helped his Sunday score soar to a 71 after three rounds in the 60s. (No worries, though, as no one playing from behind could maintain any ground they made up during the day.)

Also not surprising, given his four-bogey, one-double, and five-birdie day, was that Fowler actually agreed with Miller about the scruffy way he played himself into the winner’s circle, while at the same time brushing aside the naysaying.

“Well, I started with a four-shot lead and I still won by four, so I didn’t play great. It wasn’t a pretty round,” Fowler observed.

A couple of Rickie’s peers were less charitable about Johnny’s review.

Still, despite an error-filled effort, Fowler ended up atop the leaderboard.

“We got the job done,” noted Fowler. “A win’s a win.”

On that point, the four-time PGA Tour winner and the guy who never tires of reminding us that he fired a 63 at the 1973 U.S. Open concurred.

“Obviously a win is a win,” said Miller.