GolfPlus- Dec19 Digital Edition (Dec 19) | Page 36

‘The similarities between Brooks
and Tiger run deep and include
their patterns of speech, their use
of language, even their pauses’
FROM LEFT:
Celebrating
major No.3 with
girlfriend Jena
SIms at the
2018 US PGA;
four major wins
in 10 starts have
led to inevitable
comparisons
with Tiger ; the
now infamous
shot for ESPN’s
‘Body Issue’.
71 in the third round. Then came Sunday and a pairing
with Tiger Woods. “He was jumpy,” Elliott recalls. “It
was like being thrown into the deep end of the pool.” It
showed. Koepka bombed with a 77, tying for the second-
highest score of the day, while Woods shot 70.
Still, Elliott gelled well enough that Koepka kept him
on and the two were off and running over the rest of
2013, criss-crossing the globe together with stops in
Scotland, Wales, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Italy and
then back to Scotland.
Playing on a few sponsor exemptions at the start of the
2013-14 PGA Tour season, Koepka led after the second
and third round of his fi rst start, at the
Frys.com Open, before tying for third. A few months
later in Dubai, he tied for third again. Four months after
that, he gave the fi rst glimpse of his big game prowess
with a tie for fourth to secure his PGA Tour card at the
US Open at Pinehurst.
“That was the fi rst time I realised that he was really a
top player,” Elliott says. “He just played so well there. His
demeanour on the course in such a big event was great.
And that was early on before he’d won anything.”
It wouldn’t be long. Later that year, Koepka rattled off fi ve
top-10s in seven starts between the European and PGA
Tours, culminating with his fi rst victory, at the Turkish
40
GolfPlus
DECEMBER
2019
Airlines Open that November. He ended the season
eighth in the Race to Dubai, was named the European
Tour’s Rookie of the Year and nominated for PGA Tour
Rookie of the Year. Two months later, in February 2015,
he shot 64-66 on the weekend of the Waste Management
Phoenix Open and won by a stroke for his fi rst victory on
the PGA Tour.
Then, at The Open at St Andrews that summer,
Koepka improved each day and a fi nal-round 68 vaulted
him into a tie for 10th. The very next week, he was tied
for fourth after 54 holes at the RBC Canadian Open
before stumbling with a 74 on the last day to drop into a
tie for 18th. The good play kept on coming, with a tie for
sixth at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational and a tie for
fi fth at the US PGA at Whistling Straits.
The next year, he fi nished one spot better, tying for
fourth at the US PGA at Baltusrol before breaking
through for his fi rst career major title at the 2017 US
Open at Erin Hills, where he bludgeoned the fi eld to win
by four and in the process tied the tournament scoring
record at 16-under par, matching the mark set by Rory
McIlroy in 2011 at Congressional.
Still, many pundits in the game considered Koepka
a mostly one-trick pony, a buffed bomber who could only
win on courses that rewarded length over all else. Then he
became the fi rst player to successfully defend a US Open
title since Curtis Strange three decades earlier, using
nuance and an impressive short game to win at one of the
grand old dames of the game, Shinnecock Hills.
Two months later, he captured the US PGA at Bellerive,
where he held off charges from Tiger Woods and Adam
Scott and set a tournament scoring record, before
successfully defending that title with a largely dominant
performance at Bethpage Black this past May. For good