No matter what can and will be said of Brooks Koepka’s sputtering finish to his round yesterday, there’s no doubt about one thing: He wound up on top of the PGA Championship all the same. His retention of the Wanamaker Trophy was deemed even by his critics as a foregone conclusion, so far ahead was he of his closest competitors. Indeed, the seven strokes the rest of the field spotted him entering the final 18 was the most in major tournament history, and it was but logical to crown him early in light of his de facto status as the best of the best in the best.
To be sure, Koepka did coast to his widely anticipated podium finish — until, that is, he found himself in a losing battle with nature over his last eight holes. He tapped in for birdie on the 502-yard, par-four 10th off a superb gap-wedge approach, but then missed the fairway and had to hole a six-foot putt to save bogey on the 11th. Three holes and three more bogeys later, he saw his six-stroke lead dwindle to one vis-a-vis Dustin Johnson, who was in the pairing ahead and just so happened to make birdie on the challenging 15th. The pressure was on, with pundits speculating on the possibility of a monumental collapse.
The currents of air didn’t affect Koepka alone, however. They bothered Johnson, too. Surveying his position 194 yards from the pin on the 16th, he “hit a shot I wanted to right at the flag. I don’t know how it flew 200 yards into the wind like that.” Indeed, his five iron sailed long and led to bogey. And it was the same story for another bogey on the 207-yard, par-three 17th, effectively ending his rally. Would he have been able to play differently had he been in the last pairing instead? Perhaps. At the very least, the stress would have been felt both ways and up close.
In any case, the second-guessing is precisely why Koepka deserves to be lauded for his accomplishment. He earned the cushion he was able to lean back on in his short time of famine yesterday with superb golf through the first three and a half rounds. And in winning by two shots and thereby getting to keep the PGA Championship hardware, he becomes the only player in golf history to successfully defend two stops on the Grand Slam rota at any one year. He has claimed four of the last eight major titles at stake, a run of dominance not seen since all-time-great Tiger Woods took the sport by storm at the turn of the millennium.
Not coincidentally, Koepka has become the odds-on favorite to emerge victorious at the United States Open next month. He may well have been in any case; in his last five appearances on the US Golf Association’s extremely penal setups, he went 18th, 13th, first, and first. And the fact that he’s already being compared to Woods speaks volumes of his capacity to deliver on his promise.
Anthony L. Cuaycong has been writing Courtside since BusinessWorld introduced a Sports section in 1994.
