STEADY AS HE GOES
Koepka stumbles, but avoids slipup for impressive PGA win
BROOKS Koepka showed he is human after all, which only adds to what he accomplished this weekend at Bethpage Black. If you didn’t appreciate Koepka before, you are forced to now.
He said early in the week that winning major championships was easy. Well, it wasn’t easy at all Sunday afternoon; not with the Long Island winds howling and a New York gallery at full throat, chanting for the other guy to win.
But through his periods of adversity on the back nine, Koepka showed he can not only dominate a beast of a golf course like the Black, but he can steady himself after nearly blowing a seven-shot lead under the pressure of a major championship.
“It was very stressful the last hour and a half of that round,” Koepka said. “I wasn’t nervous. I was in shock.”
Koepka has now won back-to-back PGA Championships and back-toback U.S. Opens and the fact he wobbled a bit in Sunday’s final round should only add to his appeal. His 4over par 74 was good enough for a four-day total of 8-under for the tournament and a two-shot victory over Dustin Johnson, whose late charge fizzled with bogeys on two of the final three holes.
The Bethpage crowd wanted Johnson to win, taunting Koepka with chants of “DJ … DJ” as Koepka was struggling to hold his game together.
“What do you expect when you’re half choking it away,” Koepka said. “I think I deserved it. But I think it actually helped me. I had everybody against me.”
Cheer for him or against him, it doesn’t matter. Koepka officially became the No. 1 player in the golf rankings by winning Sunday. That only makes official what everybody else has come to recognize. Regardless of what happened at the Masters last month, there is a new king of golf and it doesn’t look like he’ll be going away anytime soon.
He might not have the charisma of Tiger Woods, the public appeal of Phil Mickelson or the charm of Jordan Spi
eth, but Koepka deserves our attention and our respect after winning four of the last eight major championships he has played in. Now he joins a series of exclusive lists that feature names like Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Walter Hagen, Bobby Jones and Woods. And you get the feeling Koepka is only going to get better after fending off Johnson on Sunday at the Black.
“I had to hang in there and right the ship,” Koepka said. “Refocus was kind of the word for today.” As unflappable as he had been over his first 3 ¹/2 rounds of the PGA Championship, Koepka looked out of sorts and in trouble after four consecutive bogeys starting at the 11th hole.
What had been a seven-stroke lead was down to one after the leader missed an 18-footer for par at the par-3 14th.
“I got stuck on the bogey train,” he said. “I can’t tell you the last time I made four bogeys in a row.”
Johnson made it easier with bogeys at the par-4 16th and the par-3 17th, but Koepka took on the wind and the crowd and posted crucial pars at the 15th and 16th that left him with a twostroke cushion going to the final hole after another bogey at the 17th.
“This is the most satisfying of all [the majors] I’ve won,” Koepka would say
As much hype as there was about Woods winning the Masters and looking to add another major championship at Bethpage, it was bit of a buzzkill when Woods didn’t make the cut and Koepka looked like he was going to run away with the tournament.
Still, the result can’t be considered anything less than a brilliant performance by Koepka. He set a course record 63 in the opening round; a 36hole record for lowest score in a major at 12-under and held a sevenstroke lead after 54 holes.
And when the conditions and the galleries got difficult, he stopped his free-fall and captured another major championship. Take that, Bethpage Black.