PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. — On his front nine Sunday at the Honda Classic, Rickie Fowler called to mind a sailor trying to hold a steady course in a stiff headwind. The final round is not always a Sunday cruise for the leader — in the first 14 tournaments of this wraparound season, the player with at least a share of the third-round lead held on to win just six times — but Fowler’s course was complicated by uncharted waters: He had never won from the front on the PGA Tour.
Ahead by four strokes at the start of the final round, Fowler recorded two bogeys and a double bogey on his way to a two-over-par 37 on the front nine at PGA National’s Champion Course.