Rickie Fowler could have walked out his back door to give this sport a try, but he would not dare
ROME — Perhaps it was the temptation of sticking a pole in the ground heading toward the heavens, but Rickie Fowler decided having a pole vault pit in the backyard of his Jupiter residence was not a good idea.
"I don't think it's worth the risk with what else I have going on," Fowler said. "If I'm going to go in the air, it's going to be on a bike. We try and stay away from that for now, as well."
A pole vault pit makes sense when you marry Allison Stokke, one of the country's best track and field athletes while growing up in Newport Beach, California. Allison broke a number of American records for high school pole vaulting and reached All-American honors at the 2011 NCAA Indoor Championships while attending Cal. Although she failed to make the 2012 US Olympic team, she continued vaulting at national meets until 2017.
But getting her husband to give her sport a try was never a good idea.
"I stuck to just carrying the poles and getting them from the garage to the pit," Fowler said. "Or filming or giving any maybe insight to what I saw. But I stayed away from taking a run down the runway and trying to pole vault.
"It's not something that you just pick up and go run and try and plant the pole and make a jump. There's a few months of work that go into getting to that point."
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Fowler, who is making his fifth Ryder Cup appearance this week, was introduced to Swedish pole vaulter Armand "Mondo" Duplantis, the current world outdoor and indoor record-holder.
Duplantis visited the Fowlers a few years ago for two reasons: to play golf with Rickie and take ownership of their pole vault pit. Mondo and his brother, Andreas, moved the pit to Mondo's home in Louisiana.
"We didn't need it anymore," Fowler said. "So that's now his practice pit back in Louisiana.
"It was kind of fun because we were able to make a couple day trips out of it. They came down, played some golf, got to spend some time with him and his brother."
Fowler, 34, has played in four Ryder Cups, more than any member of the U.S. team with the exception of Jordan Spieth, who matches Fowler's appearances. A year ago, he would not have been considered a candidate for the team while in the worst slump of his professional career. Fowler's game quickly declined after winning the 2019 Phoenix Open and cratered a year ago when he sank to No. 185 in the world, his worst ranking in more than 12 years.
But the turnaround started soon after and just in time to catch the attention of U.S. captain Zach Johnson. He had eight top-10 finishes this season, including winning for the first time in more than four years at the Rocket Mortgage Classic.
Fowler was asked Wednesday if the Ryder Cup was on his radar a year ago.
"It's always on your radar," he said. "How close it is, that's another kind of situation. It was fairly distant.
"It's been a fun year, finally, after a few years that were kind of tough and just a grind. But to kind of go through that and to kind of see myself continue to get into a better position and get closer to having a chance of making the team … it was on my radar, but that radar had to go out pretty far to kind of capture the Ryder Cup."
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Why US Ryder Cup member Rickie Fowler got rid of the pole vault pit in his backyard
