Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
A Brooks slide down rankings is very unlikely
BROOKS KOEPKA’S rise to World No1 completes a remarkable period of musical chairs at the summit of the sport.
For only the second time ever, four players – Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Justin Rose and Justin Thomas (left) – have all held top spot in the same year.
The last time that happened was 21 years ago when Tiger Woods, Greg Norman, Tom Lehman and Ernie Els all scaled the heights in 1997.
Koepka, the current US Open and US PGA champion, deserves to be where he is and there’s every reason to believe he can stay there for the foreseeable.
The unflappable Floridian boasts a quality you can’t coach – ice in his veins down the stretch.
At 28, he has also taken a very different route to the summit than many others.
He only turned pro in 2012 and made the brave decision to come over to Europe, where he teed it up on the Challenge Tour.
It didn’t take long for him to secure his European Tour card and a win at the Turkish Airlines Open in 2014 was soon followed by a victory on the PGA Tour at the Waste Management in Phoenix.
The trajectory of his rise was steep but – more importantly – consistent.
Golfers can tap into hot streaks and overachieve at certain times of their careers, but most don’t possess the X-factor to extend their purple patch. Koepka does.
Two years ago, the big question hanging over him was: Can he win a major?
Well, he answered that with a dominant display at the 2017 US Open at Erin Hills.
The doubters returned again at the start of this year when he was forced to take four months out with serious wrist problems.
Would he play again? Could he get his mojo back if and when he returned?
We have our answer.
There’s no doubt Koepka benefited from his time on the sofa and there’s some merit in arguing that his recent injury was the catalyst for taking his game to the next level.
It helped him recalibrate and made him a better player.
Golf can consume you, but Brooks has cultivated a positive outlook to go with an inherent ability to tough it out when the sport throws you a curve ball.
To defend the US Open title – six weeks after returning from injury – and add the USPGA title in August after outgunning Tiger on the final day speaks volumes.
Is Koepka our next superstar? Time will tell, but he has everything in his locker – a powerful drive, an intuitive short game and a golfing intellect to match.
At 28 years of age he sits at the top of the pile with the golfing world at his feet.
If he embraces his new found status the way I suspect he will, he could be there for a while.