Koepka holds off Woods to win PGA Championship
ST. LOUIS — The roars were unlike anything Brooks Koepka had ever heard, and he knew exactly what they meant.
They got louder for each birdie by Tiger Woods that moved him closer to the lead Sunday in the PGA Championship, and Koepka could hear a ripple effect of noise. First, real time. Seconds later, another burst from patrons watching on TV in chalets. Then, distant cheers from every corner of Bellerive when the score was posted.
“We knew what was going on,” he said. “It’s pretty obvious when Tiger makes a birdie. Everybody on the golf course cheers for him.”
Koepka knew exactly what to do.
Amid relentless pandemonium, Koepka ran off three straight birdies to end the front nine and seize control. When he was tied with Adam Scott through 14 holes, with Woods one shot behind, he delivered back-to-back birdies.
The last one was a laser of a 4-iron from 248 yards that settled 6 feet away, sending him to a dream finish of a year that began with the 28year-old Floridian wondering if a wrist injury that kept him out four months would ever allow him to compete again.
“That will probably go down as probably one of the best shots I’ve ever hit under pressure,” he said.
He closed with a 4under 66 for a two-shot victory over Woods and took his place among the elite in golf. Koepka became the fifth player to win the U.S. Open and PGA Championship in the same year, joining Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan and Gene Sarazen.
It will be impossible to overlook him now, not with the Wanamaker Trophy to go with his back-to-back U.S. Open titles. Koepka won two of the three majors he played this year, and three of his last six. Not since Woods won four in a row through the 2001 Masters has anyone won majors at such an alarming rate. AFTER a five-monthlong training in the Tuscany Training Camp in Italy, the Asian Games-bound Cebuana Mary Joy Tabal is excited to come home to Cebu for the final phase of race preparations.
The 29-year-old pride of Cebu wrapped up her training for Asiad yesterday and will arrive in Cebu tomorrow before flying to Indonesia on Aug. 23 for the quadrennial sporting meet.
“I’ve done all the training and finished the entire training program. I’m good to go,” Tabal told SunStar Cebu on an online interview yesterday. “The last thing to do now is my conditioning.”
The 29th Southeast Asian (Sea) Games gold medalist Tabal said that the training in Italy that started last March marked the longest time that she was away from home.
“The feeling of being nervous for the bigger competition is there but I’m more excited right now to go home. I will be doing the tapering and conditioning in Cebu because it about the same time in Indonesia (with only one hour difference),” she said.
Tabal, the only Filipina to qualify and finish the Olympics two years ago in Brazil, will represent the country for the first time in the Asiad. She will be competing in the women’s 42-kilometer race.
With her recent stint in Italy, the ace athlete of Motor Ace Racing Team learned a lot of things and one of the most notable for her was adopting a new game mindset.
Amidst her training in Italy, Tabal tested her progress in the 23rd Jeju International Tourism Marathon Festival in Jeju Island, South Korea, where she won the women’s halfmarathon title after clocking 1 hour, 18 minutes and 44 seconds.
The 2018 Asian Games is set to open on Aug. 18 and will conclude on Sept. 2.