Injury forces Koepka to call time on season of woe

Brooks Koepka’s PGA Tour season is over after he withdrew from the Northern Trust due to injury.

Koepka has struggled with a left knee injury which saw him sidelined for three months last season and also needed oncourse treatment to his hip during his title defence at the US PGA Championship in San Francisco.

The four-time major winner was ranked a lowly 97th in the Fedex Cup standings ahead of this week’s first play-off event at TPC Boston, with only the top 70 on Sunday evening advancing to the BMW Championship.

Koepka had played the previous six tournaments in succession, missing three cuts and recording a best finish of tied second in the WGC-FEDEX St Jude Invitational.

The 30-year-old was two shots off the lead heading into the final round of the US PGA

Championship at Harding Park but struggled to a closing 74 to finish in a tie for 29th.

Koepka later expressed regret about comments following the third round which appeared dismissive of some of his rivals.

Former US Open champion Dustin Johnson held a oneshot lead after 54 holes and when asked about his chances Koepka told CBS: “A lot of guys on the leaderboard I don’t think have won [a major]. I guess DJ has only won one. I don’t know a lot of the other guys that are up there.”

Rory Mcilroy admitted he was taken aback by Koepka’s verbal dig at Johnson, but Koepka was more concerned about the “other guys” part of his comment, which would include eventual winner Collin Morikawa.

“Yeah, it’s definitely that part because that’s a shot at all the other guys,” Koepka told Golfweek. “We pretty much know everybody, we grew up playing golf with them and it came across that I had no idea who these guys are. And that’s completely false.”