Koepka a ticking timebomb for US
FOR those still wondering why the United States can have more than half the golfers in the world top 10 and a Ryder Cup record that, frankly, sucks, it was all there at Portrush. Brooks Koepka could be seen looking at rules officials and tapping an imaginary watch as he waited for his countryman, JB holmes, to play the 12th. Later he moaned about the slowness of holmes’s game. ‘What I don’t understand is when it’s your turn to hit and your glove is not on,’ said Koepka. ‘he doesn’t do anything until his turn.’ And he’s right. holmes was taking an age and is known for it. Even so, one can hardly imagine potential team-mates on the European team causing trouble for each other this way. Not least as Koepka would have been very aware that Sunday was probably the worst day of holmes’s professional life. he started his final round in third place, 10 under par, and after a round of 87 — 16 over par — concluded it tied 67th. One might imagine, even in a singular game such as golf, there might be sympathy between players who could one day be on the same team, a consoling word, at least a little understanding. holmes might also be considered to have extenuating circumstances. he needed brain surgery in 2011 to address a condition that caused vertigo. he still has a service dog, Ace, who helps calm him when the condition strikes. So it is a significant achievement that he is competing at all and not entirely unreasonable to think Koepka, however frustrated, would not wish to make a bad situation worse. Perhaps he feels as world No 1 that with 23 Americans separating him and holmes — ranked 57th — maintaining comradeship is not a priority. Yet holmes has made the United States Ryder Cup team on two previous occasions — in 2008 and 2016, coincidentally the only two times the US has won this century. Meanwhile, the mystery of American underachievement continues.