Brooks Koepka wins PGA Championship for second major of 2018
Brooks Koepka continued his meteoric rise to the top of the golf world on Sunday, holding off a hard-charging Tiger Woods to win the PGA Championship.
The PGA Championship is often thought of as the misfit major, but the drama that carried us through Sunday afternoon at Bellerive rivaled any other event. And at the end of the day, Brooks Koepka raised the Wanamaker Trophy, his second major championship of the year.
Koepka finished the final round of the PGA Championship the same way he began, with a two-shot lead. It was no victory march, but it should cement Koepka as one of the greatest players in the world today.
The two players closest to the now three-time major champion also happen to be two of Koepka’s favorites growing up. While that might seem like a backhanded compliment if there ever was one, it’s also a statement of great respect and admiration.
Tiger Woods, of course, has been the inspiration for countless kids to pick up a golf club for more than 20 years now. He also helped bring the type of training into the upper echelons of the PGA Tour that have made super-athletes like Koepka and Dustin Johnson so successful.
The other idol Koepka fended off was Adam Scott. It doesn’t feel this way, but Scott turned pro in 2000, when Koepka was just ten years old. The Aussie has always had one of golf’s purest swings, and it’s something that the 28-year-old has worked to emulate throughout his career.
With Scott playing so well beside him in the final pairing, and the roars of the gallery with every heroic approach and sunk putt from Woods just ahead, it wouldn’t have been crazy to see Koepka falter. A two-shot lead can disappear in the blink of an eye, but Koepka demonstrated that his famous biceps might only be his second best muscle.
Koepka was able to overpower Bellerive for much of the week, ranking second in the field in driving distance – over 324 yards on a rain-soaked course – and still hitting 41 of 56 fairways. But down the stretch, with two certifiable Hall of Fame players in the hunt, Koepka never lost a beat, blocking out all the noise to drain par putt after par putt and forcing everyone else to come get him.
It’s that mental toughness that might not make him a world-class interview – although he’s getting a lot better with all these majors – but it does make him a fascinating player to watch at work, even for Woods.
"“He’s a tough guy to beat when he’s hitting it 340 in the air,” Woods said, talking about Koepka’s game with the same kind of awe Woods’ elders used to talk about his. “[Hitting it] 320 in the air is like a chip shot [for him]. That’s the new game.”"
The new game – the game that Tiger created two decades ago, and kids have grown up trying to perfect. Today, they’re succeeding, and Koepka is doing it as well as anybody.
To be fair, we won’t truly know just how great Koepka will be for years. Critics point to the fact that he’s won just a single “regular” PGA TOUR event. But three majors speak for themselves in a lot of ways. That’s one behind Rory McIlroy (29), tied with Jordan Spieth (25), and two more than both Dustin Johnson (34) and Justin Thomas (25).
It’s even difficult to put Koepka’s major outburst into historical context right now. He’s just the fifth player to win both the U.S. Open and PGA Championship in the same year. Before Sunday, that list included Gene Sarazen (1922), Ben Hogan (1948), Jack Nicklaus (1980), and yes, Tiger (2000). To be involved in any conversation with that particular Mount Rushmore means you’ve had a great career.
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Brooks Koepka has made massive strides in just the last 14 months. And what’s scary is that despite how good he truly is – and how great he may still be – none of it seems to bother him in any negative fashion. He’s like a machine built for winning big-time golf tournaments, and it’s just business between the ropes.
That’s not to say he doesn’t have a personality – you could see him grinning and joking with Tiger and his crew after the round – but when he’s in the zone, he’s becoming nearly impossible to beat.
Koepka still doesn’t get the credit he deserves, but perhaps this performance will be the one that puts him over the edge. He’s now won three of the last six majors he’s started (he missed the Masters this year recovering from a wrist injury), and finished in the top ten in five of his last eight.
Davis Love III plays historic 100th major championship. dark. Next
In a SportsCenter interview on Sunday night, anchor John Anderson joked with Koepka that he could always throw in a win at Phoenix or something “to be like the regular guys out there”. Koepka chuckled, perhaps quietly acknowledging the unexpected imbalance in his growing major record.
But with the enormous Wanamaker Trophy gleaming over his shoulder, it’s hard to imagine that he’d trade this moment for any other. Brooks Koepka is here to stay, and the golf world should be ready for more of this in the future.