USA TODAY International Edition
Mr. Double Major Koepka also now No. 1
FARMINGDALE, N.Y. – Can we please pause for a moment to appreciate Brooks Koepka? No, really. You must. I don’t care if he’s not Tiger Woods. This is history in the making, right in front of our eyes.
By holding on by the skin of his teeth to win the PGA Championship Sunday, Koepka is the first man ever to hold back-to-back titles in two majors at the same time. He won his fourth major in his last eight tries over just 23 months, rising to world No. 1 in the process. He led this one wire-to-wire, from Thursday morning to Sunday evening. In his first two rounds, he beat Tiger by 17 shots over just 36 holes.
Do I need to say more? I can. He could have, and probably should have, won last month’s Masters. Tiger’s victory was majestic, but Koepka made it possible with his double-bogey into Rae’s Creek on the par-3 12th and missed putts of 13 feet and 8 feet on the final two holes, losing to Tiger by one.
Or, how about this? In the midst of a fickle, whipping wind, he nearly squandered the biggest lead in the history of men’s professional golf Sunday evening — but then he didn’t. Reeling from four consecutive late bogeys Sunday that dropped his once insurmountable seven-shot lead to just one over a charging Dustin Johnson with only four holes to play, Koepka immediately steadied his nerves and built the lead back to three shots after consecutive bogeys by Johnson.
There was more. Koepka was tested again after an ugly three-putt bogey on the 17th hole dropped his lead to two shots with one hole to play. And again, when he pulled his final drive onto a downslope beside a fairway bunker in the midst of Bethpage Black’s tall, wispy grass. Scrambling to the end, he gave himself a 6-foot putt for par, which he made, accentuated with a ferocious fist pump of both triumph and relief.
“I’m just glad we didn’t have to play any more holes,” he said in his victory ceremony, and at that moment, he seemed about as vulnerable as he has been over the past two years.
He often is so unemotional and methodical and Popeye strong that he seems more like a golf robot than a real human, which makes him difficult to relate to and therefore easy to under-appreciate.
But, sports fans, that has to stop, because Koepka just turned 29 and he’s going to be around for a very long time and you’re going to have to get used to seeing this calm, confident, uber-talented golfer dominate his game.
You might even find that you like him. When things were at their worst on the back nine, he heard his raucous gallery start chanting “D.J., D.J.,” in honor of Johnson’s surge. Golfers aren’t used to having fans chant about anyone, much less a player two groups in front of them. But Koepka said he not only didn’t mind, he used it to snap out of his slump and get back on track.
“It’s New York,” he said. “What do you expect when you’re half choking it away?”
Koepka said Saturday night that he is “pretty flatlined most of the time, as you can tell.” But the stress took its toll Sunday, he admitted. “The conditions from today — I challenge anyone to go out and play in these conditions. It was brutal.”
His honesty is admirable. “I don’t need a sports psychologist. I’m pretty good at it. I know what I’m doing. It’s simpler than what guys think. Guys make the mistake of trying to figure out, when they get to a major, what’s going on, what’s different. It’s not. It’s just focus. It’s grind it out, suck it up and move on.”
Koepka said that on Saturday and then did exactly that on Sunday.