THE NORTHERN TRUST 2019: Power ranking the top ten at Liberty National

Oh, come on, you knew it was coming. I wanted desperately to pick just about anybody else for this, but I couldn’t figure out a way to pick anybody besides Brooks here. In a lot of ways, I wanted to make Webb Simpson the top pick just because he’s been so close to victory the last two weeks. But when one of those wins went to the big-game powerhouse that is Brooks Koepka, I couldn’t justify removing him from the top of the power rankings.

No, his game isn’t totally flawless, despite what his otherworldly record would lead you to believe. He can get a bit squirrely of the tee, and that can put him in a bind occasionally, but not so much as to hamstring his drive to steamroll all those who would stand before him. He’s actually more accurate off the tee than Dustin Johnson and Rory McIlroy, despite it being a relatively narrow margin.

I mean, the stats are all there, but there’s only one thing you need to know about BK to justify his place at the top of this power ranking, and basically every other one he’ll be in for the foreseeable future: he’s the best golfer on the planet today, especially when his give-a-damn meter is properly calibrated. And for those of you who doubt it, that’s basically all the time. HE says he only practices before majors, he showed up to the course an hour before winning the WGC-FedEx St. Jude…the guy can do it all, and he’s unflappable. It’s a machine-like combination.

The NORTHERN TRUST isn’t a major, a WGC or an international team event, but it does give him the inside track to the FedEx Cup title, and I have to think that’s all it takes to get a competitor like Koepka fired up. It’ll take a strong week from any of his fellow competitors to knock Koepka off the peak.