Koepka looking for strong finish
Ticats want killer instinct on offence
PARAMUS, N.J. — The majors are done for the year. Brooks Koepka is not.
Koepka is one week removed from winning the PGA Championship which, to go along with his second straight U.S. Open title, gives him a sensational season by anyone’s standards. Tiger Woods called Koepka a lock to win PGA Tour player of the year.
Koepka doesn’t believe that’s the case. And a look at his FedEx Cup playoff record is all the motivation he needs.
In three years of being eligible for the PGA Tour’s post-season, Koepka has one top-10 finish. He has started inside the top 20 each of the last three years and has yet to improve his standing when the four playoff events were over. One year, he didn’t make it beyond the third playoff event.
“Sitting back and reflecting on it, how cool is it to be player of the year? It would be such an honour,” Koepka said Wednesday. “But I need to finish it off. I want to come out in the playoffs and actually perform, and hopefully, leave it where there is no option.”
It starts today at The Northern Trust on a course that might remind him of Bellerive, where Koepka set the PGA Championship scoring record at 264.
Ridgewood Country Club is plenty long at 7,385 yards for a par 71. The rough is thicker than usual because of recent rain, which also means the course is soft. Dustin Johnson, the world’s No. 1 player and the top seed in the FedEx Cup, rarely hit a shot from the fairway without splotches of mud on his ball. And this is one of the strongest fields of the year. The FedEx Cup playoffs begin with the top 125 on the PGA Tour, meaning all of them have shown some degree of form to get here. Five players are missing because of injuries (Henrik Stenson, Rickie Fowler, Bud Cauley), a wedding to attend (Patrick Rodgers) or an extra week of rest (Rory McIlroy).
With the points worth quadruple value, the top 100 after this week advance to the second stage at the TPC Boston next week, with the top 70 reaching the BMW Championship at Aronimink and the top 30 going to the Tour Championship at East Lake, which most players are starting to regard as the promised land.
A lot has gone right for Koepka in a year that began so wrong.
The pain he felt in his left wrist in early December never went away over the holidays, and after finishing 37 shots behind Johnson at Kapalua, he was out for four months. He spent some two months in a soft cast to let the partially torn tendon heal, and wound up missing the Masters.
Months later, his return was nothing short of amazing. In his third start, he was runner-up at Colonial. Three weeks later at Shinnecock Hills, he became the first player in 29 years to win backto-back in the U.S. Open. Two months later, he became the first player since Tiger Woods in 2000 to win the U.S. Open and PGA Championship in the same year.
“I guess it’s like having an animal in a cage and you open that cage and they just can’t wait to get out,” Koepka said.
HAMILTON — Moving the ball hasn’t been a problem this season for quarterback Jeremiah Masoli and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats’ offence.
Capping drives with touchdowns, though, is another matter.
Hamilton (3-5) hosts Edmonton (6-3) tonight. The Ticats are averaging 403.5 offensive yards per game, second only to the Eskimos (425.7).
But the Ticats stand fifth overall in scoring (24 offensive points per game) while the Eskimos, led by CFL passing leader Mike Reilly, are second (28.6).
“Obviously we have a system that produces a lot of yards,” said Masoli. “I think for us, it’s no secret, putting up points and finishing drives.
“That’s what our emphasis was all week.”
The contest could be an passhappy affair. Masoli is ranked third overall in passing yards (2,465) and four of the CFL’s top five receivers will be on the field in Edmonton’s D’haquille Williams (48 catches, 831 yards, six TDs) and Derel Walker (47 catches, 816 yards, six TDs) as well as Hamilton’s Brandon Banks (51 catches, 718 yards, three TDs) and Jalen Saunders (43 catches, 712 yards, two TDs).
“We’ve got a lot of playmakers out there,” Masoli said. “My job is just to try to get them the ball as fast as possible so they can move.”
June Jones said finishing drives has been a problem for Hamilton’s offence since he became head coach last season. The Ticats are 9-9 overall under Jones.
“I went back and looked at everything,” Jones said. “Last year we didn’t do it because everything was so new.
“But this year it’s been a combination of everything. We’ve found ways to screw it up and just haven’t executed at the end of the game. We worked on it this week, we had a good practice (Tuesday) focusing in on what we were doing in training camp in those situations. Now the players need to make plays and we need to come up with the right calls for them to make those plays.”
Penalties have been a problem this year for both teams. Edmonton is averaging a CFL-high 111.1 penalty yards per game while Hamilton stands third at 98.7.
But what angers Jones is the nature of Hamilton’s penalties.
“I think the penalties we’ve taken have been the stupid kind of penalties that really cost you,” he said. “I want to say five to seven penalties we’ve had on defence (have come) where we had them on the field and gave them either a touchdown or points after that penalty.
“It’s hard enough to win, let alone when you do those kind of things. It’s frustrating but you address it, coach it, talk about it all the time. Now the players have to step up, be disciplined and respond.”
The six-foot-three, 230-pound Reilly makes Edmonton’s offence click. The CFL’s most outstanding player last season leads the league in passing yards (3,046), TDs (19) and last weekend threw for 424 yards and three touchdowns in 40-24 win over Montreal.
Reilly also has rushed for 229 yards and a league-high eight TDs.
“Whenever you play a good quarterback like that, you better make sure you’re doing everything right,” said Jones. “His team really believes in him and you can tell that.
“They know he takes hits for them and delivers the ball and that’s what rallies the team.”
Masoli completed 19-of-29 passes for 332 yards with three TDs and an interception a 38-21 win over the Eskimos on June 22. Reilly finished 20-of-30 passing for 286 yards with two touchdowns and a pick.
Canadian Mercer Timmis ran for 133 yards on 17 carries for Hamilton while scoring two TDs. On Thursday night, he’ll back up starter Alex Green.
Edmonton boasts the CFL’s third-leading rusher in C.J. Gable (532 yards, 5.1-yard average, two TDs). Jones is very wary of the former Ticat.
“C.J. is a good runner,” Jones said. “He’s underrated as a pass receiver and he’s a blocker, he knows how to stone you.”