Brooks only has eyes for top prize

WATCHING Brooks Koepka win the US PGA must have been what it was like watching Babe Ruth slug his way to all those baseball records in the 1920s. The 28-year-old Floridian is a different kind of golfer. Heavily muscled, he looks like he should be taking on Anthony Joshua rather than Tiger Woods. Almost half the drives he hit during the tournament, with no wind assistance, flew more than 320 yards. Yet for all that wide-open Bellerive played into his massive hands, the most impressive thing of all was the manner in which he shut out all the madness going on around him and kept his nerve for his two-stroke success. With three major victories out of the last six in which he has competed, he has the air of a natural born winner, but it wasn’t always like that. Indeed, his short-game coach Pete Cowen had to deliver a severe rollicking on the eve of his triumph at the US Open last year. ‘I’d followed him around the week before in Memphis and his body language was awful,’ said the straighttalking Yorkshireman. ‘He was caught in a run of second-place finishes and it was a bit “Poor me” to be honest. I sat him down and told him with that attitude he’d never win anything. ‘I think it shocked him a bit because the penny dropped pretty quickly.’ In majors, anyway. Koepka is the only player in the modern era with more majors (three) than PGA Tour victories (one). Why the discrepancy? Koepka finds his mind wandering during regular tournaments. It seems he’d rather be lifting weights than trophies that are run of the mill. It’s one of the reasons why he does not get the coverage of Jordan Spieth and others, but he has won as many majors as Spieth. He always did look an imposing figure but now he has a golf game to match, he has become the man to beat — in the majors. After the Ryder Cup, he will probably take six months off.