BLAINE, Minn. — There’s a peculiar gravity to the final weeks of a PGA TOUR season, a weight that presses harder on players teetering along the FedExCup Playoffs bubble. Rickie Fowler knows it well.

Two summers ago, he was riding the high, ascending in ways he hadn’t seen in years in the afterglow of a breakthrough win in Detroit at the Rocket Classic, finishing T16 in the FedExCup standings and returning to East Lake for the first time since 2019. It was proof that even after years of doubt, he could still summon his best when it mattered most.

Last year, the pendulum swung the other way. Fowler's season dissolved into mediocrity – he finished 108th in the FedExCup, something that wouldn’t even ensure a PGA TOUR card for a player who doesn't have winner's exemptions to fall back on, and missed out on the FedExCup Playoffs entirely.

Today, he exists somewhere in between. Amid a season that’s been neither insurgent nor irrelevant, Fowler lives in the murky middle ground of a player searching for equilibrium. He came into the 3M Open ranked 63rd in the FedExCup, a position that offers the faint comfort of security if he plays well but is a far cry from when he was gunning for the FedExCup trophy. He’s been floating in a liminal zone, a balancing act between who he once was and the player he's still trying to reconstruct.

But on Thursday, with two weeks left in the Regular Season, Fowler found something that felt closer to the sweet spot.

He opened with a bogey-free, 6-under 65 at TPC Twin Cities, his first start since 2022 and third overall in the event. He finished five strokes back of the early leader Adam Svensson, who sank an eagle putt on the final hole to post an 11-under 60 and set a new course record. Over the past six weeks, Fowler has quietly pieced together flashes of form: T14 in last week’s Open Championship, T18 at the John Deere Classic, T7 at the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday in June.

“At the end of the day, good golf solves a lot of things,” Fowler said after his first round, his tone equal parts pragmatic and hopeful. “Luckily I've been starting to play a little bit better these last few months and had some decent finishes. … Ultimately, I think my initial goal is to make it to BMW and be inside the top 50, but we'll take it day by day for now.”

For a player who's been on both ends of the spectrum, those words carry gravity. Fowler knows what's at stake, what it's like to have his season cut short, and the ripple effect of missing out on guaranteed starts for Signature Events.

But this week, the stakes run deeper than points and projections. Alongside his familiar PUMA script on Thursday was a subtle but powerful gesture: a black ribbon pinned to his hat, etched with the initials "KH." The ribbon is for Kayla Hale, the late wife of Cody Hale, Fowler’s longtime putter fitter and the craftsman behind many of his Odyssey flatsticks. Kayla passed away from cancer just a week and a half ago.

“I’ve known Cody for a handful of years,” Fowler said. “He’s helped me quite a bit on putters. … Cody’s part of the family out here, and when you’re part of the family, their family is part of the family, too. You can’t really imagine what they’re going through, him and his boys.”

For a player who’s tasted both the sting of missing the FedExCup Playoffs and the sweetness of making it all the way to East Lake, perspective has never been in short supply, but that perspective feels sharper now. And maybe that’s why Thursday felt heavier than just a solid start. Fowler was showing that even in the midst of chasing his own season’s story, he’s carrying someone else’s with him, too.