Koepka dealing with knee injury after finishing fourth at U.S. Open
Two years ago, Brooks Koepka came to TPC River Highlands with a boatload of confidence and the No. 1 ranking in all of golf.
He was a little more than a month removed from winning his second PGA Championship at Bethpage Black on Long Island in May of 2019. It was his fourth major championship overall. He almost pulled off No. 5 at Pebble Beach the week before arriving in Cromwell, finishing in second place.
Koepka, then 29, had won four of his last eight major championships.
“I don’t think I even thought I was going to do it that fast. I don’t think anybody did, and to be standing here today with four majors, it’s mind-blowing,” Koepka said at the time.
Koepka, the former Florida State standout, would hold onto the No. 1 spot in the world rankings for 38 weeks until February of 2020. But dropping from the top spot isn’t the only thing that has changed for Koepka.
He has been plagued by knee injuries for the better part of the two years since. He is still stuck on four majors, but has four top-10 finishes in them since the 2019 U.S. Open despite dealing with the injuries.
He enters this year’s Travelers Championship ranked eighth in the world after tying for fourth at the U.S. Open this past weekend at Torrey Pines.
Koepka had surgery to repair a partially torn patella tendon in his left knee in September of 2019. He reaggravated the injury during competiton in October and missed a few months of action.
Koepka struggled for much of the abbreviated 2020 season with injuries, which included a torn labrum. That injury forced him to miss last year’s U.S. Open, played in September due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
He was entered into last year’s Travelers Championship — the PGA Tour’s third event back from a three-month layoff due to the pandemic. But he withdrew for precautionary reasons once his caddie contracted the coronavirus.
Koepka won the Waste Management Phoenix Open in early February. But a little more than a month later, a strained right knee forced Koepka to withdraw from the Players Championship in March. He returned for the Masters, but missed the cut.
Koepka dueled with Phil
Mickelson before tying for second in May’s PGA Championship.
“I'm very pleased with it. I like it where it's at right now. I know we're a long ways ahead of the game and where we should be,” Koepka said after Sunday’s final round of the U.S. Open.
Then there’s this rivalry between Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau. It’s been building since Koepka singled out DeChambeau for slow play in 2019.
Throughout last year — before and after DeChambeau put on 30 pounds of muscle during the tour’s three months off and eventually won the 2020 U.S. Open — the two have traded barbs on social media.
The rivalry picked up steam at the PGA Championship when a piece of video made the rounds with Koepka rolling his eyes as DeChambeau walked by during his interview with the Golf Channel. DeChambeau’s spikes could be heard on the clip, Koepka lost his train of thought and dropped some expletives.
Then DeChambeau briefly photo-bombed another Koepka TV interview at the Open. last week.
“It (the rivalry) pretty much been on every news channel. Pretty much everything you look at online, it's got this in the headline, or it's up there as a big news story,” Kopeka said. “To me, that's growing the game. You're putting it in front of eyeballs, you're putting it in front of people, the game of golf, who probably don't normally look at golf, don't play it, might get them involved. I don't know how it's not growing the game.”
There were rumors that the two Americans were asked to be paired together at the U.S. Open, but both men denied they were approached by the USGA. Both men are in the field at the Travelers Championship this week, but were not paired together for the first two rounds.
“I don't care who I'm paired with. It doesn't matter to me what goes on. It makes no difference to me. I'm out there trying to play my own game. What happens inside the ropes, it won't bother me,” Koepka said.