In the largest declaration of “bro-culture” in pro golf since John Daly, the 2017 spring break Snapchat stories of Rickie Fowler, Justin Thomas, Jordan Spieth and Smylie Kaufman tearing up the Baker’s Bay Club in the Bahamas took their rightful place in the (albeit sparse) rafters of moments golf that was cool. Seeing the best young players in the world (and Smylie Kaufman, too!) shirtless, with backwards hats, swim trunks on, barefoot and beverages in hand, careening across the course with music blasting became a seminal moment for their perception: harbingers of a new generation, one utterly unconcerned with the establishment’s decorum.
When they took on SB2K17, Spieth and Thomas were 23. Fowler was 28— but his youthful charisma and clothing choices blessed him with an adolescent energy that the likes of Rory McIlroy — whom Rickie is several months older than — could simply no longer match.
This was the year that Justin Thomas would win 5 times, prevailing at East Lake and hoisting the Wanamaker Trophy. It was the season that Spieth took home the Claret Jug at Royal Birkdale. Fowler had just won in his signature orange at the then-significant Honda Classic. These young men were certainly the future of the sport — the next inspirations. In the same way Tiger Woods inspired a generation of players who were not only “golfers” but athletes in the physical sense, the next cohort would come closer to inspiring from the emotional side: The youthful energy you see from rookie season football and basketball talents. They would not be simply carefully put together young men, but kids, still young enough to have that PR-mistake-riddled fun.
And just as that future was beginning to take shape, evolving from a nascent dream to an enduring model, one by one, the three players began to fade.
Rickie came first. While it’s true he never showed the raw potential of Thomas or Spieth, never winning one of the big four, or reaching the pinnacle of the Official World Golf Rankings, he was the chairman of the tier immediately below. He won The Players – the “5th Major” – in 2015, reaching a career high of 4th in the OWGR, and drew massive crowds eager to see his signature swing, flow and fervor. They called him the best player to never win a major championship, and you could count on him for a win or two a year.
2017 marked the beginning of the end of all that. Although after the PGA National, it was a winless ‘17-‘18 season until he next lifted a trophy at the 2019 WM Phoenix Open, and his consistent results — especially the dependable in-contention status at majors — were on their way out. The boisterous win at The Greatest Show on Grass wasn’t a resurgence; instead, it mercifully held Fowler in the vestibule for one last fleeting gander at the interior before he silently exited the realm of relevance.
A standalone 2023 victory at the Rocket Mortgage Classic couldn’t lift a drowning Rickie from a sea of missed cuts and disappointing finishes. He finished in the top 15 on Tour just once since. Now 36 and the World Number 128, imagining a true revival of his career becomes more difficult to imagine with each passing tournament. In many ways, his days of influence are gone.
As for Spieth, at his height, he was the most transcendent among his Spring Break contemporaries. His most notable campaign was in 2015: the youngest Masters Champion since Tiger Woods’ 1997 coronation; the youngest US Open Champion since Bobby Jones in 1923; the Fedex Cup Champion. The comparisons to Woods began, and many speculated he and McIlroy would rule the tour side by side for the coming decade.
After 2017’s multiple win, Open-Champion season, Spieth’s form inexplicably dropped off – rather drastically. In one year, he went from World Number 2 to 17. The next year, he dropped to 44th. Then 82nd. It took him 1,351 days to win again. He won again a little more than a year later – in April, at the RBC Heritage in Harbor Town. Between the two wins, Spieth played far better than during his 1351-day drought — he even finished 2nd at golf’s oldest major. His new-found consistency, combined with the 2022 win at the Heritage, convinced many the recession of his game was coming to a close. They were wrong.
Spieth hasn’t won since he slipped on the Plaid Jacket at the Harbor Town Golf Links — a drought just over 200 days (as of the current date) shorter than his longest. He’s the World Number 51 today, and just like Rickie, his slump can’t be reasonably expected to end anytime soon. Although he remains competent enough to qualify for the major championships and the FedEx Cup Playoffs (unlike Fowler), he’s a shade of the player he once was.
Perhaps the most interesting post-2017 career trajectory of the three has been Justin Thomas’. Unlike Fowler and Spieth, whose winning ways in the biggest events have long since evaporated, “JT” currently holds two massive trophies from this decade. A 2021 Players Championship to go with his scintillating playoff finish against Will Zalatoris for the 2022 PGA Championship proved Thomas would be a force in the 2020s.
And yet, just as it did for Rickie and Jordan, a slump came for Justin. Here, though, it wasn’t his form being irrevocably lost, or his finishes disappearing from pertinence for several seasons. Instead, for two and a half years, Thomas’ game fell off a cliff and then experienced a slow burn back. If you imagine these slumps as journeys down, through and out of a canyon, JT’s has been far narrower than the other two’s.
In similar fashion to Spieth’s 2017 Open Championship win marking a loss of form, Thomas seemed to experience an extended hangover from his second major victory. From the latter parts of 2022 to the meat of the 2023 season, his game was truly off. Shockingly for a player of his caliber, he missed the 2023 FedEx Cup Playoffs (albeit coming excruciatingly, tantalizingly close). Beyond that year-and-change stretch, however, it’s been a steady climb back upward in form and consistency. He finally seemed to find some of his swing in the fall of 2023, with three straight top-5 finishes, and 2024 was a year marked by his reliable play — after the final tally at East Lake Golf Club, he tied for 14th in the season-long points race.
Still, though, as he flipped the calendar to 2025, Thomas hadn’t won since Southern Hills’ PGA Championship in 2022 — a drought slowly approaching the dreaded 1,000-day mark. To reach the first-class heights to which he was accustomed — to swing himself up and out of his drought’s canyon — he desperately needed a title.
At the Valspar Championship, in the 12th week of the 2025 season, the elusive prize was within reach: With just four holes to play, Thomas held a three-shot lead over Viktor Hovland. The pressure to finally clamber out of the gorge, however, proved to be too much — JT bogeyed two of the last three, allowing Hovland to step over him and end a drought of his own. It was a blow to Thomas’ journey, but to his credit, his post-round presser was optimistic: he insisted on his pride to have the chance to win again.
Maybe it’s karma, then, that when he had that opportunity once more just three weeks later at Harbor Town, he didn’t crumble but instead rose. The first walkoff putt of his career fell, and the slump was over. April 20, 2025 – 1064 days after his last victory – marked JT’s triumph, when he emerged from the canyon and reclaimed his spot among the sport’s best.
Notably, Justin Thomas is no longer that kid from SB2K17 – none of the Spring-Breakers are. They’re husbands, fathers, veterans on Tour and, most importantly, polished. The tears in JT’s eyes after Sunday in Harbor Town were not those of a man excited for a bright future as much as they were of one whose scar tissue has finally healed.
One wonders, though, whether Thomas will be able to stay out of the gully of slumps. The parallels to Spieth’s 2022 season are there: Improved play culminating in a win at the RBC Heritage. Spieth fell back into the canyon after his victory — he was unable to escape the hangover.
Granted, the RBC Heritage’s “Signature” status renders it a higher-profile stop on the Tour’s schedule today than in 2022. And JT’s form has of late been truly elite in a way that Spieth’s wasn’t: that near miss at the Valspar pushed him back into the OWGR’s top 10. Admittedly, it feels different for Justin than it did for Jordan: a narrower canyon and steady drive out separate him.
Interestingly, no more than one of the three Spring-Breakers (sorry, Smylie Kaufman) has been a top-tier tour pro since 2017. Rickie has been a non-factor, but as soon as Jordan won at Harbor Town and JT prevailed at Southern Hills just two months later, Spieth relapsed into his slump (and Thomas crafted one of his own soon after). If there really are golf gods, they did not appear to enjoy SB2K17. For now, their loyalties stay with the establishment.
The title of “fan favorite” does not come lightly in golf: It takes a level of either relatability or success that few have the ability to cultivate. Joel Dahmen is beloved for his everyman candor and Scottie Scheffler is appreciated for his superhuman ball-striking. What made Fowler, Spieth and Thomas singular — and what those videos confirmed — was their capacity for both relatability and success. Individually, they were able to rise to a level of marketability most any other golfer couldn’t approach, but collectively — as a unit — they had the power to change the culture of the Tour.
The Spring Break videos were the single greatest indicator of a new generation in our sport. They represented an injection of enthusiasm golf so desperately lacked (and still lacks), making the tumble of their stars all the more disheartening. Every professional goes through valleys, but the struggles of these three have all been more intense than the norm in some way: Rickie disappeared from relevance, Spieth transformed into a mid-level tour player for years at a time and Justin Thomas’ game became utterly unrecognizable for a year.
Through each of their journeys — within the canyons of their own convoluted swing thoughts, doubts and missed cuts — one thought undoubtedly remains for a player in a slump: who they used to be. It’s unforgiving, and no one’s really sure why they begin or end. Relapses abound, and a victory is often a false alarm of a career’s revival. For Rickie Fowler, Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas, the slumps have been relentlessly punishing for not only the players but the sport as a whole. However unrealistic the prospect, one hopes all three will soon be back and here to stay, because we need them.
