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PGA Championship 2019: Brooks Koepka turns human, but only briefly

By Bill Felber

FARMINGDALE, NEW YORK - MAY 19: Brooks Koepka of the United States plays his second shot on the 13th hole during the final round of the 2019 PGA Championship at the Bethpage Black course on May 19, 2019 in Farmingdale, New York. (Photo by Stuart Franklin/Getty Images)
FARMINGDALE, NEW YORK - MAY 19: Brooks Koepka of the United States plays his second shot on the 13th hole during the final round of the 2019 PGA Championship at the Bethpage Black course on May 19, 2019 in Farmingdale, New York. (Photo by Stuart Franklin/Getty Images) /
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Brooks Koepka showed that he wasn’t invincible at the PGA Championship on Sunday, but that didn’t stop him from recovering for the win.

Bethpage Black finally leveraged Brooks Koepka off Olympus just long enough Sunday to prove that he is actually human, although not sufficiently human to blow a seven-stroke lead at the PGA Championship.

Shaken by a stretch of four consecutive back nine birdies that momentarily reduced his lead to one, Koepka shot a final round 74 Sunday that was, by the standards of the day, modestly below average.

The margin he had established through the first three rounds protected him from such misadventures, even when his best buddy and workout pal, Dustin Johnson, took advantage of that string of errors to momentarily close within a shot.

Bethpage, with 30-mile-per-hour winds occasionally gusting through the back nine, also played a part. The scores Sunday were, on average, about a full stroke higher than one day earlier.

That fact alone made Johnson’s final 69 at least a fraction more remarkable, and made Koepka’s stumbles more understandable.

His two-stroke margin of victory was deceptive, as would be obvious to anybody paying attention. Until that series of  bogeys, Koepka was never in serious trouble, and he recovered in time to take advantage of Johnson’s own late round errors.

The one negative thing the outcome did was decelerate what appeared to be Koepka’s downhill run to parity with the game’s greats. By tournament’s end, the standard deviation of his dominance over the field — once hovering at record levels — concluded at 3.04.

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By the standards of the PGA Championship, that’s very, very good, roughly landing Koepka’s 2019 win among the dozen or so best in PGA Championship history. In fact, Johnson, as runner-up, managed a 2.71 standard deviation performance advantage over the field. That level of dominance would be good enough to win about two-thirds of the time on the PGA Tour.

But by the standards Koepka appeared to be forging — midway through he was on pace for the most dominant win in major championship history — the champion’s 3.04 lacked a bit in the flair department.

The victory also placed Brooks Koepka among the select few of the game’s greats who won four majors before reaching the age of 30. That list includes Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, Jack Nicklaus, Bobby Jones and four or five others of the game’s true elite.

Koepka may not be finished burnishing that particular standing; barring health issues, he will make three more major starts before turning 30.

Next. Brooks Koepka becoming the terminator of major championships. dark

Finally, it gave Koepka a fourth major within a two-year window. Again, that’s Woods-Nicklaus territory. Now, the two-time PGA Championship winner will head to the U.S. Open, where he can become the first player to win three in a row since 1905.

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