The 2021 Major season: Winners and Losers
By Bill Felber
Brooks Koepka
He may not have added to his total of Major championships, but 2021 restored momentum behind Brooks Koepka’s briefly stalled climb up the ranks of the game’s all-time greats.
Koepka began the 2021 Major calendar with a peak rating of -1.99, placing him 15th in the hierarchy of the game’s greats for peak performance.
After missing the cut at The Masters, he tied for second at the PGA, for fourth at the U.S. Open and for sixth at the British Open. Those three top 10s, two of them top fives, improved his five-season peak score, if only marginally, to -2.04.
He jumped up two places on the all-time peak list to 13th, edging ahead of a couple of Hall of Famers in the process – Byron Nelson (-2.02) and Harry Vardon (-2.03).
Those showings also improved Koepka’s career score, which stood at -17.60 entering 2021. That held him in 36th place on the all-time career chart.
Koepka finished the year at -19.25, climbing four spots on the career list. He passed Tommy Armour (-17.80), Mike Brady (-18.36), Henry Picard (-18.71) and Bob Ferguson (-19.04).
That Masters missed cut did hurt, though. Without it, Koepka could have improved another three or four steps up the career ladder, probably finishing 2021 among the top 30 players all time for career performance.
He will of course enter the 2022 season with that opportunity still in front of him.
To improve his peak standing, though, Koepka probably needs another Major win, or at least a very strong second or two. Of course he’s young and strong enough to do precisely that.