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PGA Championship: Brooks Koepka bids for status among the all-timers

By Bill Felber

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - AUGUST 07: Shane Lowry of Ireland and Brooks Koepka of the United States walk off the 18th green during the second round of the 2020 PGA Championship at TPC Harding Park on August 07, 2020 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - AUGUST 07: Shane Lowry of Ireland and Brooks Koepka of the United States walk off the 18th green during the second round of the 2020 PGA Championship at TPC Harding Park on August 07, 2020 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images) /
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Brooks Koepka may finish the weekend among the game’s 10 best for peak performance

Brooks Koepka enters this weekend’s final two rounds of the PGA Championship at TPC Harding Park poised to make more history than even he imagines.

Obviously, Koepka is going for a third consecutive PGA title, backing up the ones he won at Bellerive in 2018 and at Bethpage Black last year.

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If he wins – and he enters the weekend tied for second just two strokes off the lead – he would become the first to win three straight since Walter Hagen won four in a row between 1924 and 1927. Since then the closest anybody has come to winning even three straight was back in 1938, when the event was contested at match play. That year two-time champion Denny Shute advanced to the quarter finals before being eliminated 2 and 1 by Jimmy Hines.

Tiger Woods’ 2008 bid for three straight was derailed by his leg injury, which forced him to the sideline. Woods also had a chance at three straight in 2001, but he managed no better than a tie for 29th.

But win or lose, Koepka has positioned himself to even further enhance his standing among the game’s all-time greats with a strong finish at Harding Park.

Koepka enters the event ranked 12th on the all-time list for peak performance. A player’s peak performance rating is calculated by determining the average standard deviation of his 10 best finishes in the game’s four Major Championships over the course of the best five consecutive seasons of his career.

Koepka’s peak period began with the 2016 Masters. His current peak performance score is -2.04, meaning that in his 10 best showings of the last 20 he has finished 2.04 standard deviations better than the average of his competitors who completed four rounds.

Through two rounds at Harding Park, Koepka is on pace to finish about two standard deviations better than the field. If he does, that would improve his peak score to about -2.08, and he would ascend into the all-time top 10 in men’s major championship history.

Here is that top 10 entering play at the PGA

Player, Seasons, Peak score

1.       Tiger Woods, 1998-2002, -2.68

2.       Jack Nicklaus, 1971-1975, -2.35

3.       Arnold Palmer, 1958-1962, -2.32

4.       James Braid, 1901-1910, -2.18

4.       Tom Watson, 1977-1981, -2.18

6.       Bobby Jones, 1926-1930, -2.11

6.       Walter Hagen, 1923-1927, -2.11

8.       Sam Snead, 1947-1951, -2.10

9.       Ben Hogan, 1950-1954, -2.06

10.   Phil Mickelson, 2001-2005, -2.06

Next. Best Golfer from each state: Ohio Golf and Jack Nicklaus. dark

Were Koepka’s peak scopre following play at Harding Park to improve to -2.08, he would leapfrog Ralph Guldahl, in 11th place, as well as Mickelson and Hogan. And were he to win this weekend — producing a peak score for the tournament in the range of -2.50 — he could climb to as high as sixth on the all-time peak performance chart, passing Snead, Hagen and Jones as well.

That sounds ambitiously lofty…until one considers Koepka’s performance chart. Since the start of the 2016 major championship season, he has already won four times, tied or finished solo second in two others, and has eight top 10 placings.

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