Brooks Koepka went soft on slow-playing J.B. Holmes

Brooks Koepka made it through a glacially-paced round with J.B. Holmes on Sunday at the British Open, and he was actually nicer about it than he probably should have been.

Brooks Koepka fell shy of his ultimate goal of winning the British Open on Sunday, but there are a couple glass-half-full things he could take from the week at Royal Portrush. He completed a full season of majors inside the top four, and of the 551 golfers he faced between the Masters, PGA Championship, U.S. Open and British Open, he beat all but five of them.

Plus, he didn’t have to worry for long about making a run at the Claret Jug. The poor weather – as well as four straight bogeys to open the round – forced Koepka into some rough spots early. What he did end up having to worry about, unfortunately, was the pace of play from his Sunday partner, J.B. Holmes.

We’ve talked in this space before about the, growing focus on slow play at all levels of the game. In many ways, I can’t entirely blame Holmes, or the countless others like him. Look, I get that they’re out there playing for ludicrous amounts of cash, and that requires a certain amount of attention. But in the midst of an absolutely terrible round of 87 that saw Holmes drop from top three to beating only three players in the weekend field, how much is too much?

Holmes dropped five shots on the front nine, and kept plodding through the back nine, where he’d drop a whopping eleven more. He missed 15 of 18 greens and 11 of 14 fairways in regulation, but there he was, plumb-bobbing double bogey putts…and missing them. Koepka’s exasperation was obvious.

Walking off 12 green, Koepka stares at an official and points to his non-existent watch.
— Will Gray (@WillGrayGolfbet) July 21, 2019

Message received loud and clear. Well, that is, for everyone but J.B. Holmes, I imagine. Koepka was, unsurprisingly, asked about the pace of play that he experienced on Sunday in his post-round presser (likely while Holmes was still signing his card), and he…went the passive-aggressive route?

“It was slow, but it wasn’t that bad for his usual pace. I thought it was relatively quick for what he usually does,” Koepka said.

Wait…what? I thought this was the speak-my-mind, haters-be-damned guy who said that he had put himself in a place in the game to have his voice heard, and (I imagine) use it to make things better. That was a first-degree burn, at worst. You could find a harsher Tweet in about 30 seconds, without really even trying.

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"“That’s what I don’t understand when it’s your turn to hit, your glove is not on, then you start thinking about it, that’s where the problem lies,” Koepka said. “It’s not that he takes that long. He doesn’t do anything until his turn. That’s the frustrating part. But he’s not the only one that does it out here.”"

Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. We’ve got a root cause. But Koepka also went on to make sure people knew that he wasn’t blaming Holmes for his own less than stellar form in the British Open finale. That’s fair, but if there was ever a time to make a more vocal point, here it was.

Perhaps this was a case of deferring to the R&A, and understanding that Koepka has to deal with the PGA TOUR, PGA of America and USGA a whole lot more than that particular governing body. Maybe he was just tired after another long week. But in so many ways, he let Holmes off soft.

I’m not saying that Koepka should have made it personal, but it should be known that slow players will be called out directly. Not this backhanded “quicker than he usually is” stuff. Let it be known. It was slow, and it was unacceptable. And if it happens again, call it out again.

To take a phrase from former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s take on obscenity, I know it when I see it. It’s the same thing with slow play, and in a few ways, it’s an obscenity in the playing of the game, even with such insane stakes.

Next. Why Tiger Woods may emulate Steve Stricker's schedule in the future. dark

You don’t need to play at the pace of a lightning-fast Brooks Koepka to make people happy. Just have some respect for yourself, your playing partner, and the game itself.

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