Koepka, Spieth arrive at big moment after rough start
Brooks Koepka and Jordan Spieth have a shot at their own slice of history at the PGA Championship.
That might have looked like a long shot considering how they started their careers.
Go back seven years to find Koepka and Spieth near the end of their NCAA days — Koepka a senior at Florida State, Spieth a freshman at Texas — and then meeting again at the end of 2012 on the same course in the second stage of Q-school for the PGA Tour, both finishing with the same score. Both failed to advance. “I missed out on second stage and then had to write two essays for final exams so I could drop out of school,” Spieth said. “It was a weird time in my life.”
They turned pro with no status on a PGA Tour circuit, and both went very different directions from there.
Spieth received PGA Tour exemptions, including one that quickly sent him on his way to immediate stardom. Koepka had nowhere to go but the remote corners of the golfing world on the Challenge Tour, with no regrets how it turned out.
“I wouldn’t be where I am today,” he says.
And here they are, among the biggest names in golf, even though Koepka’s game is in better shape at the moment.
Spieth, winless since the 2017 British Open, gets his third crack at the career Grand Slam earlier than usual this time because of the PGA Championship moving to May. Bethpage Black is his next opportunity to join the most elite group in golf. Only five players have won all four majors, most recently Tiger Woods in 2000.
Koepka is the defending PGA champion and will have a chance to join some rare company, too.
Woods is the only player to have won the PGA Championship in consecutive years since it switched to stroke play in 1958 (he did it twice). And because of the move to late spring, Koepka can become the first player to hold back-to-back titles in two majors at the same time: Koepka has won the last two U.S. Open titles.
Both have won three majors. Both have been No. 1 in the world.
That’s about all they have in common.
Spieth was a freshman at Texas — he stayed only three semesters — when he first recalls competing with Koepka in the NCAA regionals in the spring of 2012. They were paired in the second round. Both teams advanced to the NCAAs at Riviera, where Florida State lost a playoff for the final spot in match play. Texas wound up beating Alabama for the championship.
“When he came to college, everyone knew who he was,” Koepka said. “And from then on, it was pretty obvious what he was going to do.”
After the NCAAs, both qualified for the U.S. Open that summer at Olympic Club. Koepka missed the cut, while Spieth shot 69-70 on the weekend to finish low amateur. Koepka did not like the idea of spending his summer at Monday qualifying, so he headed off to the Challenge Tour where he could try to play 72-hole events. He went to five European countries in five weeks, returned a month later to Kazakhstan, and won in his eighth start in Spain.
But the goal was America, so he came back to Qschool and shot 8-under 280 on the TPC Craig Ranch at Dallas. That was the same score as Spieth, who planned to turn pro, but not like this.