It takes about a minute and 33 seconds to walk from the tee box to the green at TPC Sawgrass’ 17th hole. After the tee shot Rickie Fowler just hit, his sixth and most devastating attack on the most famous green in golf, he shaves a few seconds off his time.

Fowler’s pace in moments like this has been a point of focus in recent years. The golden rule is that he’s not supposed to pass caddie Joe Skovron while they’re walking. He’s supposed to be breathing slowly and thinking about words like “process” and “tempo” and “routine.” But you can see in his face that after six hours and one of the best finishes in the history of golf, he’s finally allowing his mind to be elsewhere.

As he walks toward his 4-foot birdie putt, the concrete stare that’s present during Fowler’s best and worst moments starts to crack and he’s doing his best not to let a smile seep through. The atmosphere isn’t making it any easier. The 17th, which Skovron later recalls as being as loud as any hole he’d ever experienced, is lined with fans chanting Rickie's name over and over and over. The weather is perfect and the wind – helping off the right – has made 17 and 18 as benign as those two terrifying holes can be. He’s facing a short putt on a green where he’s been automatic for the week, a putt that – after a Kevin Kisner miss – will finish off a victory over the best field in golf and further validate all his swing changes and close calls. All this on a week where he can’t take five steps without being asked about an anonymous player survey that named him one of the TOUR’s most overrated golfers.

When he rounds the final turn and makes his way up the artificial turf ramp that connects the island green to the rest of Ponte Vedra Beach, he’s three lengths ahead of Skovron. The smile is still trying to wriggle its way though and he looks like a kid trying not to laugh during a parent’s lecture.

Fowler is one of the best players in golf so to say his win at THE PLAYERS Championship was unlikely is misguided. But the way in which he won, and the way he made it to the PGA TOUR in the first place, is what still makes you scratch your head.

As unorthodox as the story is, THE PLAYERS also felt like another stop on the ride toward the inevitable. Fowler’s rise to the forefront of golf has always felt more like destiny than possibility.

And in this moment, he knows he’s arrived at where he’s supposed to be. You can see it on his face, right there in the smile he’s trying to hide.