Rather than lose it, Koepka grabs Open
ERIN, Wis. — Bobby Jones once said, as Fox-TV kept hammering listeners over the head about all day yesterday, “Nobody ever wins the National Open. Somebody else just loses it.” Yesterday, that was a false narrative.
Brian Harman, who was the 54-hole leader by a stroke, didn’t lose it. He held steady at 12-under to finish in a tie for second after an even-par final round that would have been more than enough to win at many Opens.
Hideki Matsuyama, who birdied five of the last eight holes to go 6-under for the day and 12-under for the tournament and tie Harman, didn’t lose it either. In fact he made a mad rush to the finish, recording birdies on 11, 12, 14, 16 and 18 to enter the clubhouse only a shot back.
No, nobody lost the 117th U.S. Open yesterday. Brooks Koepka won it, which is really how it should be.
Bobby Jones may have known all things about golf but he didn’t know this Open would be won, not lost, by a 27-year-old with the steely resolve to respond to Matsuyama’s late challenge by dropping three straight birdies on him after he’d closed to within that single sliver of a stroke. After he had, Matsuyama sat in the safety of the clubhouse waiting. Waiting for the fall that might make him the first Japanese golfer in history to win a major championship.
Matsuyama’s 12-under left him 1 back of Koepka as the latter stood on the 14th tee. While Matsuyama sat, watching and waiting for Jones’ words to be made true, Koepka was faced with four chances to do as Jones suggested. Four chances to lose the U.S. Open.
Having won only once since joining the PGA Tour three years ago and having never truly been in contention at a major in the way he now found himself, Koepka easily could have gone sideways. Instead, he went birdiebirdie-pushing his lead to a more comfortable 4 strokes with two holes to play before coasting home with his foot on the brake to become the seventh straight first-time winner of a major championship.
That is a string of new champions that speaks either to the depth of the talent playing today or to the fact there is no superstar left on Tour. Your outlook on that depends on if you like your cup half full or half empty. Either way, Koepka’s record-tying 16-under 272 was far more than a runaway because he never once led the tournament until late yesterday afternoon.
Koepka was often lurking but never leading until he birdied the first two holes. Then, as Matsuyama attacked him on the back nine and Harman bogeyed behind Koepka on 13, he responded with a crushing firestorm of tee shots and long-range putting. In so doing, he lifted himself from golf obscurity to heights long predicted for him but not yet achieved.
“I saw the leaderboard before I hit that putt (for birdie on 14),” Koepka said. “I saw I could have a 2-shot lead if I made that. I did see that but I don’t know if it had come up that (Harman) had bogeyed yet. I was just trying to make that putt and give myself as big a cushion as I could.”
Koepka made it to get 2