PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Florida — Brooks Koepka is back. Not all the way back but at least he’s back playing on the PGA Tour again after four years.
You may have noticed he didn’t play in last week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill. Well, he wasn’t in the field. That’s part of his penalty for self-deporting to LIV Golf. Koepka has to play his way back into the exclusive and lucrative Signature Events such as Bay Hill, Pebble Beach and the rest.
How hard can that be for the former No. 1 player in the world, a guy with five major championships on his resume? Harder than you think. That’s because as Official World Golf Ranking Points go, he’s playing golf in the slow lane. The non-Signature Events he plays in, such as the Cognizant Classic, offer far fewer points than the Signature Events.
Exhibit A: Koepka got his putter work at the Cognizant and tied for ninth. That earned him 4.9 OWGR points. Last week at Bay Hill, Rickie Fowler tied for ninth and scored 8.66 points. So Koepka is playing for approximately half as many points as the guys playing in the special events, which means he has to get in gear to reclaim his rightful spot in the world’s top ten. Koepka knows that and doesn’t have a problem with it. That was part of his deal.
“I’m not allowed to play certain events,” he said before The Players Championship. “I would have liked to have been there (Bay Hill) last week but I understand those are the consequences of my decisions. I’m a big boy, I understand that, So I got to sit at home and watch. The answer to everything I play good golf and everything else will take care of itself.”
Koepka’s old nickname used to be Major Brooks, because he had a knack for playing better in the major championships than he did in regular PGA Tour stops. His record tells the tale. He’s won more major championships (five) than PGA Tour events (four). He’s been a big-game hunter ever since he won back-to-back U.S. Opens and back-to-back PGA Championships and once said he felt like he could win double-digits worth of majors. Media types assumed he meant ten but at the time, given the temporary dearth of talent at the top of the tour (post-prime Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson and pre-prime Scottie Scheffler), maybe Koepka thought he could challenge the Jack Nicklaus mark of 18 professional majors. If he was, he was smart enough not to admit it.
Stuff happens. He had a knee injury that proved fairly serious, more serious than he thought at first. And that was a key reason why he took the LIV Golf deal and pocketed a reported $120 million. He didn’t know if he would recover well enough from the knee issue to play as well as he had. He smartly took the big money as an insurance policy, earning more from LIV in those four years, including another $45 million in tournament winnings–than Scheffler did for winning 19 times during that span for $91 million.
It is tempting to get overly optimistic about Koepka’s upcoming season based on a couple of good rounds at the Cognizant. His putter held him back, a problem he admitted he’d been battling nearly two years before switching to a mallet putter after the Cognizant’s first round. It is nearly major season, Koepka’s former favorite hunting ground. And, by the way, the U.S. Open returns to Shinnecock Hills, where he won the 2018 U.S. Open. We are entering golf’s prime time and Koepka appears ready, at least on the surface.
“The Players was always the kickoff to a big tournament every month,” Koepka said, “You’ve got this, April you get the Masters and then so on. So this is where I feel like you need to know where your game is. You come to the Players, hey, you’ve got a couple more weeks before Augusta. If you’ve got to make any changes, this is where it needs to happen. In my eyes, this is the kickoff of the real heat of the golf season. It’s fun, it’s exciting, I just need to be on top of things.”
He already proved the assertion that if you can’t make putts, you can’t win. He discussed his putting changes and the technical details that went with it. Basically, he switched from a blade putter to a mallet. He liked to hit putts toward the toe of his blade putter but has to play it more off the center of his mallet. Also, he got into bad habits, he said, including swaying a bit while putting, and has worked to correct those.
“I’m just trying to fine-tune everything to make sure I’m still on the right track,” he said. “Everything’s felt pretty good but yeah.”
The putting miscues put more pressure on his long game, which made things spiral out of control even more. The Koepka of old (pre-LIV) might not have admitted it but the new Koepka discussed his frustration.
“I felt like I had to make birdie from my approach play,” he said. “It can cost you because you try to be maybe a little bit more aggressive or take on a pin that you normally wouldn’t have. Then somehow you end up in a horrible spot, and you’re looking at bogey with a wedge. You’re sitting back in the middle of the fairway on the next hole going, ‘What was I doing? How did I just turn a birdie opportunity into a bogey?’
“That was eating at me. I haven’t looked at the statistics but for a while the only thing I was birdieing was a par-5 I reached in two or a par-4 where I drove it pretty close to the green. I don’t know what my make percentage was outside of 10 feet, but it wasn’t very good.”
An optimistic and confident Koepka used to be what major championship fields dreaded from 2017 through 2019 when he snagged four major titles in three years. The runup to the Masters will show just where Koepka’s game is. After The Players, he will also tee it up at the Valspar Championship at Innisbrook and the Texas Children’s Houston Open at Memorial Park before getting to Augusta.
This week will be his seventh Players Championship appearance. He has never had a top-10 finish at TPC Sawgrass. His best finish is 11th, believe it or not. The main reason he hasn’t done better here is the 17th hole, the almost-island green. That has been his nemesis hole.
“One year I made an 8 and a 7 there,” he said with a smile. “That wasn’t very good. That 17th hole has gotten me over the years. I’ve played good rounds here but that one bugaboo always got me. The 17th hole has got my number. My friends give me a bunch of crap about it, between the 17th here and the 12th at Augusta. It seems to be the par 3’s.
“The last time I Played here, I hit 5-iron on the 17th. It was blowing like crazy. I want to say I was playing with Scottie (Scheffler) or maybe Rory (McIlroy). Somebody hit 6-iron and it came up short, so I hit 5 and then went over. It’s tough to argue when the wind is blowing at 35 (mph).
“But yeah, my friends bust my chops about it pretty good. It’s all fun and games. I’ve just got to go out and go do it.”
As he said, good play is the answer to everything. If Koepka is going to return to his position as a major contender in the major championships this year, it all starts here at Sawgrass this week. And the 17th hole will be a key.
“I hit the green yesterday in the practice round,” Koepka joked, “so I was pretty pumped.”
It’s a long way back to the top. That’s a start.
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