Brooks Koepka Doesn’t Blink With Tiger Woods On His Heels To Win PGA Championship
Brooks Koepka is a physical and mental beast. Maybe a time-machine cyborg as well. He’s also remarkably a 3-time major winner (four overall Tour wins) in his 100th official event. That and the fact he seriously worried about never playing competitive golf after tearing a wrist ligament (he missed the latest Masters).
Koepka had to shoot a stellar final round 66 to beat Tiger Woods’ best-ever major score of 266. The 28-year-old is simply unflappable and combines ridiculous length off the tee, impeccable iron play and good enough putting (he did miss three-straight makable birdie putts on the back-nine to provide a better cushion) to win by two.
Golf.com’s Joan Niesen writes that Brooks is golf’s newest Terminator.
No, don’t just look at him. Really watch him. Look at him, and see those biceps, the strained cuffs of his green shirt, that tan, the white hat silhouetted against the fairway. They’re easy, the jokes about how much he squats or lifts or presses—how many pounds, how many kilograms, how many Wanamaker trophies.
But watch him. Watch how he sinks a putt on Bellerive’s 8th hole, the ruckus from Tiger Woods’s birdie on No. 9 still dissipating. Watch how he strides down the 18th fairway, putting together the final piece of the Bellerive puzzle like it’s nothing at all, as if he’s not playing alongside one of his favorite golfers, Adam Scott, as if the greatest of all time hasn’t been nipping at his lead all day from a hole ahead. It’s easy to label Koepka the jock, the slow-twitch muscle, the bore—but that’s incomplete.
“It’s tough to beat when the guy hits it 340 [yards] down the middle, that’s tough,” Woods said of Koepka after the round. “What he did at Shinnecock, just bombing it, and then he’s doing same thing here. I played with him in a practice round and he was literally hitting it 340, 350 in the air. And when a guy’s doing that and hitting it straight and as good a putter as he is, it’s tough to beat.”
“Three majors at 28, it’s a cool feeling,” Koepka said. “It really is. You know, hopefully I can stay healthy. I’ve kind of had some trouble with that the past two years, three years. … I’m excited for the next few years. As a fan of golf, you should be excited. Tiger’s come back, what Dustin [Johnson]’s doing, Justin [Thomas], Rory [McIlroy], [Jordan] Spieth. It’s a great time to be a golf fan.”
ESPN’s Kevin Van Valkenburg says Koepka wasn’t losing to anyone…not even Tiger Woods.
Up ahead, it was obvious Tiger Woods was pouring in birdies. The fairy-tale finish at the PGA Championship that everyone seemed to be longing for was taking shape. It was starting to feel like a remake of the 1986 Masters, with Koepka playing the role of Greg Norman, and Tiger morphing into Jack Nicklaus. The sentimental favorite was going to conjure up some old magic, and the young and brash phenom was going to wilt. The pressure was mounting with each roar.
“Everybody on the golf course could hear it,” Koepka said. “You could hear it trickle down as they changed the scoreboards. You’d hear different roars every three seconds. It was pretty obvious when Tiger made a birdie.”
But this wasn’t 1986. There was one significant difference this time. In this version, the brawny, confident antihero never blinked. You don’t have to love it, but Koepka was so icy and impressive amid the circus, you have to respect it.
