The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Brooks is back
Four-time major champ Koepka to play Travelers Championship
Brooks Koepka, a fourtime major champion and the world’s third ranked golfer, has committed to play in the Travelers Championship next month, the tournament announced on Thursday morning.
Koepka is the reigning two-time PGA Championship winner and champion of both the 2017 and 2018 U.S. Open. This will be Koepka’s fifth time — and third straight year — playing at TPC River Highlands in Cromwell, his best finish a tie for ninth place in 2016.
This announcement by Travelers was the first for a player commitment since early March: eight days before the PGA Tour canceled the Players Championship and suspended tournament action indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The PGA Tour resumes play June 11 at the Charles Schwab Challenge in Fort Worth, Texas. The Travelers Championship is the third tournament on the revised schedule June 2528. “We’ve tried to pay attention to what has happened around us in determining when it would be appropriate to talk about what players are coming to the Travelers Championship this year,” Travelers tournament director Nathan Grube said. “There have been so many unknowns and so much uncertainty. We feel like a month out, everything is tracking where everyone hopes things track so we can start to talk more about guys committing.”
Golfers have been committing since Travelers was announced as a part of the revised schedule, but none with the marquee value or world ranking of Koepka, the PGA Tour Player of the Year in 2018. He was the world’s top-ranked golfer when he played at the Travelers last year.
Koepka, 30, had announced on The Golf Channel last week that he intended to play the first three tournaments when the PGA Tour resumes play next month. The first four events will not have fans in attendance due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Normally, the Travelers follows the U.S. Open on the schedule. And the WGC-Fed Ex St. Jude’s Invitational — where Koepka is the defending champion — was supposed to be played the following week. So the change in the schedule, combined with the time off, may have factored into Koepka coming.
“(Last fall), we thought Brooks wasn’t sure. He likes the golf course. He
said (at that time), ‘I just don’t know what 2020 looks like now,’” Grube said. “After the April announcement (of the revised schedule), we started to hear from guys, players started to officially commit. Everyone took a fresh look at their schedule.”
The Travelers Championship boasts five players
in the world’s top 10. No. 1 Rory McIlroy, No. No. 4 Justin Thomas and both Patrick Reed and Patrick Cantlay, tied at No. 7, are in the field along with Koepka. Also committed are Bryson DeChambeau, the world’s 13th-ranked golfer, and three-time Travelers champion Bubba Watson.