Rickie Fowler breaks down in tears after just missing 1st win in front of his grandparents

For all his popularity as a marketing face and his brand as this exciting young talent, Rickie Fowler is one of the more flatline players on the PGA Tour. Sure, he makes fashion statements and has so many nontraditional non-golf interests and audiences. But that doesn’t mean he gets excitable or emotional. He almost never celebrates wildly when he hits a big putt, and never loses it in anger, slams clubs or screams when things don’t go so well.

So, it was a bit stunning and heartbreaking to see this kind of emotion after Sunday’s playoff loss to Hideki Matsuyama on Sunday at the Waste Management Phoenix Open. Losing an early February tournament on the West Coast swing is obviously not the primary cause of the emotion, but rather how close he came to pulling if off in front of his whole family, including his grandparents.

Fowler talked at length this week about how much his grandpa, Yutaka Tanaka, meant to him growing up and how he first introduced him to the game. Fowler also got a tattoo this offseason on his bicep of his grandpa’s name in Japanese script. The family had a skybox perch on the 16th on Sunday. Rickie showed up there with a two-shot lead and proceeded to stuff his tee shoot to about 10 feet and all but lock it up at TPC Scottsdale. He looked up to the area where his family was lining the railing and gave them an acknowledging nod -- they were all about to celebrate this together.

“I mean, it’s gonna hurt because I felt like I had it.”

I remember Fowler doing a red-eyed interview after coming so close in that PGA Championship sprint against darkness and Rory McIlroy at Valhalla. But I can’t really recall ever seeing this kind of emotion, one way or another, from Fowler. In golf, we always overplay and overhype the emotion, character and class of the players. But almost everyone says Fowler is one of the best dudes out there, and it’s hard not to want to root for him even more now.