Koepka, the man who wins majors

LOS ANGELES — Brooks Koepka is the most famous golfer we don’t know, a champion content in his achievements — and to heck with everything else.

He talks like the baseball player he once wanted to be, candidly, unpretentiously. If that isn’t good enough to get him into a television commercial, well his play has put him into the winner’s circle.

Especially at the majors, the tournaments Koepka himself admits are the only ones that matter.

A month ago he won the PGA Championship for the third time and starting Thursday at Los Angeles Country Club, he has the chance to win the U.S. Open for a third time

No song and dance routines. No appearances on late-night TV. Just comments that reflect reassuring confidence.

“I'm pretty sure I know what it takes to compete in majors,” he said Tuesday. “I've won five of them and been second four times. And just over my track record of how to prepare when you're here, how to prepare when you're home, I've got that, I guess, on lock.”

Would Tiger Woods have said something like that, even if he believed it? Would Arnold Palmer? 

But they weren’t 34-year-old Brooks Koepka, whose image never matched his results.

 It would be appropriate if that changed here at LACC, whose image of obsessive restriction may be altered with the playing of a tournament whose very name, Open, means it is available to those eligible.

 Now the oil sheik wealth of the LIV has overwhelmed the PGA Tour (Don’t call it a merger, it’s a partnership), was the PGA Tour explanation — and so we may soon see more of Koepka.

Whether he will apply for readmittance to the PGA Tour which banned him when he accepted the enormous cash payoff to join LIV is unknown at present.

Sure, we can ask Koepka, but surely he will give us that repetitive answer that he is concentrating on, yes, winning the Open. As if talking about something other than the blind shot to LACC’s seventh green would throw off his game plan.

 “It’s a tough golf course,” Koepka said about LACC North. 

Not quite a surprise, certainly. You think they’re going to hold what amounts to America’s golfing championship at someplace easy? Or simple.

An Open Curse and the way it is prepared is meant to challenge every shot in your bag, from tee to green, from fairway to rough, from bunker to putting surface. 

Open entrants get frustrated, defeated almost from the moment their opening tee shot creeps into the rough. Koepka understood not to get discouraged, which is an acquired quality. 

Koepka said chaos prevails in the majors, particularly at the US Open. Asked for an example to be referred to the 2018 Open at Shinnecock Hills on Long Island.

“Everybody was… complaining,” he said. “I just felt like it was — they were all so focused on the golf course they kind of forgot about what was going on, that they were there to play a major championship. Okay, the greens are pretty fast. But if you leave yourself with an uphill putt, it's not too bad.”

 Neither was Koepka’s finish, he won.