Rickie Fowler gets over the line, Talor Gooch picks up another 'W,' Bernhard Langer sets The Senior Record and more in this week's edition of the Monday Scramble:

There was no demonstrative display. No enthusiastic fist pump or guttural scream.

Rickie Fowler leaned back and let out a sigh of relief.

It’s been a long four years.

What has been obvious for months was made official Sunday at the Rocket Mortgage Classic: Rickie is back. He birdied the final hole in regulation with a dart to 4 feet, then rolled in a 12-footer on the first playoff hole to defeat Collin Morikawa and Adam Hadwin and capture his first Tour title since Super Bowl Sunday in 2019.

At the time, Fowler was ranked eighth in the world. His sponsorship portfolio might have dwarfed his playing record, but there was no doubt he was a fine Tour player – a five-time winner, a Players champion, a prime-time headliner who had top-fived in all four major championships, a gazillionaire who was beloved by fans and his peers.

“But even when you’re playing well,” he said, “it’s not going to last forever.”

And it didn’t.

Fowler’s game started slipping later that year, in part because his coach, Butch Harmon, stopped traveling to Tour events. That led Fowler to begin working with John Tillery, and that partnership never produced the results they both were seeking. Fowler slumped as low as No. 185 in the world. He fired his trusty caddie. Tillery was dismissed, too. Last summer Fowler was brought into the infamous players-only meeting in Delaware not because he was one of the Tour’s best players – in fact, he didn’t even qualify for the second playoff event, keeping his card on the number. No, he was there because he was important to the Tour brand. Because Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and others needed his support.

It felt, at that moment, like Fowler’s career was on life support. He admitted that he doubted his prospects, too. Sure, he’d get into some Tour events because of his star power and fan appeal, but it seemed like his days as a serious contender were over. Remember Harmon’s famous gripe with Fowler – that he needed to decide whether he wanted to be a pro or a Kardashian? It was going to be harder than ever for him to dig deep now that he was 34, now that he was a husband, now that he was a father.

But give Fowler an immense amount of credit: Golf’s pretty boy did the dirty work. He returned to Harmon, hired another longtime friend Ricky Romano as his caddie, and then put in the hundreds of hours to jump-start his stagnant game.

Even if Fowler didn’t win Sunday for just the third time in 11 tries as a 54-hole leader, well, he would sometime soon. He was playing as well as he ever has … less than a year after being at his career worst.

“This year and how I’ve been playing of late,” he said, “is probably the best I’ve ever felt about my game and played.”

Fowler is top 10 statistically on Tour. He’s back among the top 25 in the world. He’s up to 12th in the U.S. Ryder Cup standings (and a virtual lock given his past experience, current form and many friendships in the team room). It’s all coming together, at a time when his self-belief had wavered and many could written him off.

Little wonder he had such a memorable reaction to his ball dropping on the last green.

“It was a nice moment,” he said, “to feel like the weight on my shoulders was finally off.”

Funny thing. He’s never looked stronger.

Talor Gooch’s stellar 2023 continued Sunday at Valderrama where he surged past Bryson DeChambeau on the back nine to capture his third LIV event of the season.

During a closing 68 at one of Europe’s most iconic venues, Gooch made four birdies on the back nine, including one on the final hole to become the first to three titles this year.

Gooch has one more LIV start, this week in London, before teeing it up in the year’s final major at Royal Liverpool. Gooch is exempt into The Open because, unlike last month’s U.S. Open, the R&A didn’t alter its qualification criteria, allowing those who were among the top 30 on the final 2022 FedExCup points list to play – even if they were no longer “eligible” after defecting to LIV.

Though Gooch leads the LIV player of the year race, his form hasn’t yet translated in the majors. He tied for 34th at the Masters and missed the cut at the PGA. He doesn’t have a single top-10 in 10 career major appearances.

Gooch’s dramatic victory capped another week in which LIV officials, players and defenders suggested that the circuit is, as Dustin Johnson said, “full steam ahead” – even with the short- and long-term viability of the circuit in question because of the framework agreement.

Sports Illustrated reported last week that Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the Public Investment Fund, met with Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka, Johnson and DeChambeau, LIV CEO Greg Norman (who wasn’t mentioned once in the agreement) and other LIV officials. Johnson said afterward that hearing from Al-Rumayyan himself “just gives me much more confidence in where we’re going and what we’re doing. I think LIV’s in a great spot right now, and it’s only going to get better."

But the future of LIV is seemingly in doubt because of the agreement that, as written, would allow PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan to review the tour and then make a recommendation on its best path forward – whether that’s folding it, continuing to have it run as a parallel tour, or incorporating it into the existing Tour structure. But there also have been recent examples – such as the multiyear deal between LIV and Andalucia that was announced last week – that seem to suggest that LIV will be around not just in 2024 but in future years, too.

This saga is as unpredictable as ever.

Two months shy of his 66th birthday, Bernhard Langer became the winningest senior player of all time with a resounding victory at the U.S. Senior Open.

Even with three consecutive bogeys to finish, Langer won by two shots over Wisconsin’s favorite son, Steve Stricker, on his home turf at SentryWorld. With it came Langer’s 46th career senior victory, moving him – finally – ahead of Hale Irwin.

Irwin was 61 when he captured the last of his victories on the over-50 set. Langer has been chugging right past that mark, extending now for the fifth time his record as the oldest winner in tour history. This was his 13th win alone in his 60s.

“It’s been a long time coming, but I’m very, very happy,” he said. “Never thought it would happen at a U.S. Senior Open, but I’m very thrilled that the record of 46 wins happened this week.”

Langer has now won nearly 14% of his PGA Tour Champions starts (46 of 329), capturing multiple titles for the 11th consecutive season.

What a legend.

Gather 'Round the TV: U.S. Women's Open. The best tournament of the week is the Women's Open, staged for the first time at Pebble Beach and live in primetime on the East Coast. Once again, all eyes will be on 20-year-old Rose Zhang, who just so happens to own the women's competitive course record (63) at Pebble. The best part of Rose's ascension is that it has put pressure on the other leading Americans to step up their games, too – so Nelly Korda and Lexi Thompson, where you at? 

Just What He Needed: Collin Morikawa. It’s been a very un-Morikawa-like stretch for the two-time major champion, who didn’t have a top-10 finish since the Masters and had work to do just to qualify for the season-ending Tour Championship. But even after three mediocre days in Detroit, he gave himself a great chance to end his 23-month winless streak: He hit all 14 fairways in the final round, shot a closing 64 and narrowly missed twice on the last hole – with a birdie putt that would have effectively ended the tournament, and then a juiced 9-iron that hopped just over the back in the playoff. “I’m in this little lull and this, hopefully, is just that boost to get me out of it,” he said afterward. Morikawa has showed these little glimmers of improved play before – we’ll see in the last seven weeks of the season if it’s for real this time. 

The PR Nightmare Continues: Tiger Woods. We’ve yet to hear from the biggest star in the game on the biggest story in the game … that is, until Sunday night, when he didn’t offer his views on the Tour-Saudi alliance but instead added a clarification to an internet report (from the Twitter account Desert Duffer LLG) that shared a recently-made-public court document from a 2022 town hall meeting with Monahan. At the meeting, Tour officials were apparently hoping for Woods’ participation and attendance, but Woods said Sunday that he had never seen any “talking points memo” and didn’t attend the player meeting. That’s it. No further comment. Woods has never taken much of a front-facing role when it comes to making and shaping Tour policy, but his public silence during these tumultuous times is rather striking. His voice carries weight – use it.

#Trending: Bryson DeChambeau. Looking trim, fit and fierce, DeChambeau should be a force to be reckoned with in the right conditions at Hoylake. His resurgence has been one of the biggest surprises of the season, as he followed up his tie for fourth at the PGA with another top-20 at the U.S. Open. Still, incredibly, he has yet to win on the LIV circuit, as he squandered a two-shot lead at the turn Sunday in Spain. That he was able to control his ball on a course as penalizing as Valderrama is a promising sign, however, as is the fact that he’s improved in each of his past three Open starts. 

Not Ideal!: Taylor Pendrith. For a player who shows as much promise as the long-hitting Pendrith, he has been shockingly poor in crunch time. He owns (literally) the worst final-round scoring average on Tour – 73.21 – and that’s exactly the mark that he hit Sunday while playing in the final group on a calm, rain-softened day at overmatched Detroit Golf Club. Given that deficiency, perhaps it wasn’t any surprise he went 0-4 last year at the Presidents Cup in the most pressure-packed situation he’d faced so far. Something here is clearly lacking.

Hmmmm: Adrien Dumont de Chassart. Much attention (and deservedly so) has been paid to Ludvig Aberg, the all-everything standout who has turned heads on Tour and warrants serious consideration for the rebuilt European Ryder Cup team. But if captain Luke Donald needs to take a flier or two to round out the rest of his roster, he could do worse than study the recent play of Dumont de Chassart, another PGA Tour U graduate who has a 65 scoring average in his first three Korn Ferry Tour starts, including a win. The dude is playing some sublime golf right now. What if it continues for another two months?