Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship 2019: Power Rankings

Brooks Koepka is no stranger to the European Tour, having come up the professional ranks through its circuits in 2013 and 2014. He is, however, a bit of a stranger to Abu Dhabi GC.

The 28-year-old American has only played two rounds at this event after a missed cut in 2014. He was near the bottom of the barrel following rounds of 77-73, but he’s sure come a long way since.

Koepka is a five-time PGA Tour winner with his three majors already cinching his World Golf Hall of Fame status before he’s even in his 30s.

Koepka has a better short game and putter (56th and 68th strokes gained last season on the PGA Tour, respectively) than he’s given credit for. With that said, his prowess off the tee and with his irons are his calling cards.

His bombing style works well at this week’s event and it’d be a surprise if he’s not top-10 in the field in strokes gained off the tee. It’s proven to be fairly successful in recent years, wouldn’t you say?

Koepka will also have less rust to shake off compared to most of the field as he already teed it up in 2019 at the Sentry Tournament of Champions. He also played a lot in the fall, including a win at the CJ Cup.

While Koepka is known for not playing his best outside of the majors (the CJ Cup win is helpful against this), he was pretty solid throughout all of 2018.

He missed just one cut last year, and that was the Canadian Open a week after hopping the pond back from the Open Championship.

Even if Brooks is missing his best stuff, I’d like to think he can still sleepwalk to a top-20 and be useful to fantasy owners out there.