PUT IT IN THE BROOKS!
KOEPKA SURVIVES BETHPAGE BLACK TO DEFEND PGA TITLE
This was supposed to be a stress-free Sunday walk in the park for Brooks Koepka. But this park was Bethpage State Park, the home of the diabolical Black Course. And the day ended up being not nearly as easy as it figured to be. But he survived. Somehow. And now, Koepka — all strapping 6-feet, 205 pounds of him — is a New York Giant. He staved off a stunning back-nine slump of his own, a spirited challenge from his close friend Dustin Johnson and 30-mph gusting winds to repeat as the PGA Championship winner Sunday. Koepka, who shot a f inalround 4 - over 74 , f i ni s hed 8-under to Johnson’s 6-under after DJ posted a 69. Jordan Spieth, Patrick Cantlay and Matt Wallace finished 2-under. Luke List was 1-under. Those were the only six players to finish the week below par as Bethpage ended up baring its teeth. For Koepka, 29, it was his fourth major championship victory in the last eight in which he’s played, a remarkable span of 23 months. And it was — without argument — the most difficult of them all to close. “Today was definitely the most satisfying out of all of them for how stressful that round was, how stressful DJ made that,’’ he said. Koepka took a record seven-shot lead into Sunday’s final round. No player in the history of major championships or PGA Tour history had ever lost a 54-hole lead of seven shots. Surely, after the way he’d manhandled the brutal Black Course for the first 3 ¹/₂ rounds, the steely Koepka would be as rock solid as anyone to complete the job. Until it looked like he wasn’t. With Johnson hanging around, Koepka started skidding out of control like a car with bald tires in a rainstorm on the LIE, carding four consecutive bogeys on Nos. 11, 12, 13 and — of all places — the par-3 14th, the shortest hole on the course, where he shocked himself by airmailing the green. Those gaffes, along with a Johnson birdie on No. 15, turned what was once a seven-shot lead into a throat-drying, one-shot differential.
“I wasn’t nervous,’’ Koepka said. “I was just in shock, I think. I was in shock of what was kind of going on.’’
Now a buzz of anticipation engulfed Bethpage. Could this really happen?
Johnson, though, followed the birdie on 15 with a bogey on 16 when he hit his approach shot over the green and into the rough. Same thing happened to him on 17. And now that one-shot lead was back to three for Koepka.
But Koepka kept it stressful even after Johnson faltered on 16 and 17.
He missed a 7-foot par putt on the 17th hole to leave himself only a two-shot cushion as he walked to the 18th tee. Then he pulled his tee shot left into some high grass on the edge of a bunker. He punched out of there, hit a wedge onto the tee to about 6 feet and made the parsave putt.
When the ball disappeared into the cup, Koepka showed something few outside of his inner circle believed he possessed: emotion.
He showed a lot of it, with a violent fist pump and a guttural scream: “YESSSSSSS!’’
“That was, I know for a fact, the most excited I’ve ever been in my life ever there on 18,’’ Koepka said.
It wasn’t quite the release of emotion we saw out of Tiger Woods last month when he won his first Masters in 14 years and first major in 11. But this was a Koepka we’d never seen before. Stoicism be damned. “I’m just glad we don’t have to play any more holes,’’ Koepka said, sounding like a victorious boxer who didn’t think he had one more round in him. “That was a stressful round of golf.’’
On Saturday night, after his third round was complete, Koepka said he didn’t know what his resting heart rate is and said, “But if I did, it would probably be not far off what it is sitting on the couch versus the first tee or the 18th green.’’
It’s unlikely his heart rate was at a couch-level rate for the 90 minutes of the tournament.
Koepka, who appeared to have put the tournament to sleep before the weekend began with a 63 on Thursday and a 65 on Friday to get to a record-low 128, became only the fifth wireto-wire winner of the PGA Championship. He, too, moved to No. 1 in the world, overtaking Johnson with the victory.
“I don’t even know if I dreamed of this,’’ he said. “I’m still in shock right now. To be standing here today with four majors, it’s mindblowing.’’