PGA Championship 2019: Brooks Koepka playing a historically different game

The PGA Championship is turning into a victory march for Brooks Koepka. Where will he wind up in comparison to the game’s all-time greats?

The PGA Championship basically ended sometime Friday among Brooks Koepka’s flurry of birdies.

What’s being contested the rest of this weekend at Bethpage Black is the Koepka Invitational. The invitees are Brooks, Tiger, Jack, Arnie, Ben, Lord Byron, Slammin’ Sam, Bob, Sir Walter and others of the game’s immortals.

Koepka hasn’t caught that field yet…but he’s gaining on it.

His third round even par 70 Saturday may not have literally put the PGA Championship beyond anyone else’s reach, but as a functional matter that’s the way to bet. He holds his seven-stroke lead over the field, which for purposes of this discussion is represented by Dustin Johnson, Luke List, Harold Varner III (who gets the honor of playing in Sunday’s final pairing) and Jazz Janewattananond.

How substantial is a seven-stroke advantage? Think about it this way. Koepka is as far in front of that quartet as they are in front of the guys tied for 26th place.

A victory would give Koepka four majors — in a span of less than two years, by the way. Win four and you are indisputably among the greats. Everybody who’s done it is in the Hall of Fame or — in the cases of Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy — eventually will be.

And since he’s only 29, there’s no particular reason to believe he’ll stop winning any time soon. By the time he was 29, Mickelson famously had zero majors to his credit; he didn’t win his first until he was 34.

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Could any of the four guys tied for second rally Sunday to win the PGA Championship? Sure…but they’ll probably have to go ultra low. Think in terms of a 64, and understand that may not be good enough. When Koepka gets on this kind of run, he doesn’t let up.

Beginning with his 2017 U.S. Open win, Koepka has come to five majors with at least a plausible chance at victory. His final round scores in those five opportunities have been 66, 67, 68, 70 and 71. Yesterday’s 70 might be the worst he was going to do, especially with clear conditions Sunday.

As for Koepka’s chase of the immortals, he still has a way to  go. But considering that he’s only really been building his resume for less than three seasons and that he is likely to enter the U.S. Open as a prohibitive favorite to become the first person to win three straight in more than a century, he may only need time.

Jack, Arnie, Tiger, Bobby and Ben remain ahead of Brooks Koepka for the present…but most of them are in the clubhouse and he has a lot of the course still to  play.