Masters: Tales of Koepka and Tiger

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Part of the deal. Brooks Koepka said it. He understands you can’t do a thing about the weather, major golf championship or not. He also understands how to play the game, whatever the conditions.

As indicated by his place on the scoreboard, which is better than anyone else’s through a Masters which was supposed to be over, but like one those old European films that just keeps going and going.

Then again it is over. Probably. Technically. Koepka is running away with the thing — sorry, sloshing away. It’s been wet — “Super difficult,” said Koepka. “Ball’s not going anywhere.”

However, Koepka, who’s already won two U.S. Opens and a PGA Championship, almost certainly is going on to a victory and the green jacket presented to Masters winners.

When on this cold (55 degrees) soggy Saturday play was suspended yet again, Koepka had a four-shot lead over Jon Rahm and 30 holes remaining. Yes, there’s a lot of golf left but the other guys are the ones struggling, not Koepka, who like most who win the Masters, turns the par-fives into fours and never blinks.

The only real question when Friday’s worrisome second round, the one halted because of falling trees and fleeing spectators, resumed Saturday morning was whether Tiger Woods would retain his impressive record of never missing a Masters cut. He would.

Woods has now expanded his streak to 23 in a row. From 1997, the year he won the first of his five Masters, and shares the mark with Gary Player (1959-1982) and Fred Couples (1983-2007). 

"I've always loved this golf course, and I love playing this event," Woods said Saturday. "Obviously I've missed a couple with some injuries, but I've always wanted to be here. I've loved it.”

He’d love to win again and tie Jack Nicklaus’ total of six championships, but his body is against him after that 2021 car accident, and so is time. Woods is 47,  which is 15 years older than Koepka, who, having recovered from his own injuries, a knee requiring surgery, appears as strong and no less eager than a couple years back.

“I’m not too concerned with playing 30 holes,” Koepka said of his Sunday round, which after the storms is supposed to be held in acceptable weather.

“I’m pretty sure I’ll be up for it, considering it is the Masters.”

If he isn’t there’s something very wrong.

Masters: Old names, new games

AUGUSTA, Ga. — They’re knee-deep in nostalgia at the Masters. The opening shots of round one Thursday were struck by guys in their 70s and 80s, former champions Gary Player, 87, Jack Nicklaus, 83, and Tom Watson, 73, who once shot in the 60’s.

Then after waking up the echoes, providing a few moments to recall how it was, the year’s first major steps back quickly to the way it is. To a new generation, to names like Viktor Hovland, Jon Rahm, and straight from his self-chosen disappearance on the LIV Tour, Brooks Koepka. Big hitters, boomers, and big names. That’s usually been the case at the Masters, where the grass, with an exception, is short and the tee shots long, where you can score low.      

It was the late Tony Lema, who said in so many words, the U.S. Open, where the fairways are narrow and the hazards severe, is hard work, a struggle, but the Masters is a pleasurable bit of recreation, entirely almost predictable, and fully enjoyable.   

In golf and tennis, the fans want success for the favorites and at the Masters that’s what they get, Nicklaus won six times, Tiger Woods five, and Arnold Palmer four. 

Eighteen holes into the 2023 Masters, Hovland, Rahm and Koepka are tied at 67, five-under par. Koepka has won three majors but none since he took the money and fled to the Saudi-finance LIV Tour — LIV in Roman numerals is 40, the number of holes for that tour’s tournaments.    

Rahm has won a U.S. Open and for most of this season was No. 1 in world rankings. Hovland, the Swede, seemingly always is in the contest. Not an anonymous soul in the group, normal for a Masters. The event brings out the best of the best.  

No, Woods, tied for 54th or something like that after a two-over 74, isn’t up there, but, hey Tiger is 47 and dare we remind you again, only two years away from that car accident which, if it didn’t take his life, took away much of the strength in his legs. 

Of the three tied for the leader, Koepka may be the most surprising, to us, not to himself. He did it with back-to-back U.S.Opens and a PGA, but other than being mentioned as a footnote in the war between the PGA and LIV tours there’s hardly been a word about his play. There was, however, television coverage of his lifestyle in the Netflix series Full Swing.    

Koepka, whose swing is very full, was told in one episode of the show that his game appeared to be far away from a great Masters round.    

“Anytime with something like that,” Koepka insisted. “You don’t see everything right, a lot of it was injury-based. They (the doctors) told me after (knee) surgery it was going to be pretty much a year and a half; I mean getting out of bed takes 15 minutes.”

Then, asked if the LIV issue puts more pressure on him in the Masters than when he’d been on the PGA Tour Koepka said, “I don’t really think about things like that. It’s just a major.”  

Hard to imagine Jack or Tiger saying that.

Koepka’s as tough as Torrey Pines

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SAN DIEGO — Brooks Koepka is the sort of guy you want on your side. Or on the first tee. He’s as tough as the courses he plays, never making an excuse and as likely to get irritated by an interviewer’s question as he is by his own missed putts.

He wanted to be a ballplayer but was limited to golf when, as a 10-year-old, his face was crushed in a car accident and he had to give up rough and tumble sports. If his game changed, his attitude did not.

Somehow, maybe intentionally, maybe accidentally, Brooks and Bryson DeChambeau got involved in a very ungentlemanly feud, the sort you’d never expect in golf but the sort that has developed.

What makes it more interesting is that both have won major championships — and this week, among shots both verbal and literal, are trying to win another, the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines.

The course is a bitch, stretched out more than 7,800 yards on a bluff above the Pacific. The rough, poa annua grass, is gnarly. The wind blows. And for good measure, jets from the Marine air base at nearby Miramar roar above with unnerving consistency.

In other words, give us a golfer who can be as nasty and unrelenting as Torrey Pines. A golfer like Brooks Koepka.

He shot a 2-under-par 71 Thursday in the first round, and if that wasn’t the lead it was close enough. Asked if it were important to get off to a good start, Koepka offered a response that was both repetitive and accurate.

“You can’t win it today,” he said, “but you can definitely lose it. Pretty pleased. Not the best, but I’ll definitely take it.”

Not that he has another choice.

Koepka is 6 feet, 205 pounds. He looks like a linebacker, or a major league catcher — in other words, an athlete. After leaving Florida State, he missed qualifying for the PGA Tour, then he went to Europe, played where conditions are difficult and the living is different. Toughening up, you might say.

When Koepka returned to America after winning in Europe and Britain, he was ready. He won the U.S. Open in 2017 and then again in 2018, becoming the first to repeat since Curtis Strange in 1988-89 (and only the second since Ben Hogan in the 1950s).

He followed that double with another double, victories in the 2018 and 2019 PGA Championship. Some players never win a single major. Koepka won four major majors in two years.

Then there was knee surgery and rehabilitation, which kept him from entering the 2020 Open at Winged Foot (won by DeChambeau). “Didn’t even watch it,” he said.

Now we’re all watching — and listening

“I’ve got a good game plan,” he said of success at the majors. “Focused. I know what I’m doing.”

That would seem an understatement.

“And I don’t try to do anything I can’t. It’s just all about discipline in a U.S. Open. That’s the gist of it.”

What some wonder about is the gist of the apparent disagreement between Koepka and DeChambeau — personality, philosophy, just plain dislike. Brooks looks away.

“As far as perception, I'm not really too concerned,” Koepka said of the public guesses. “I’m worried about what I've got to do and what I'm doing. I'm not concerned about what other people think. If I was concerned about what everybody else thought, I'd have been in a world of pain.”

He means the mental agony, as opposed to the physical, the knee.

“I've got more mobility right now than I ever have,” he said, “so that's a solid thing where I can start building some strength again and just keep the progress going.”

No nonsense, no pretense, good sense.

Open course is tough, and so is Mel Reid

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SAN FRANCISCO — Mel Reid looked at the course, literally, and knowing the history, virtually, with the same honesty she looked at herself.

Reid knew what was out there and could accept it.

Now a day into the U.S. Women’s Open, Reid tied for the lead with amateur Megha Ganne and can accept that.

On Thursday, in weather that was Marine Layer dreary, Reid, prepared mentally for what she would face, had five birdies and a 4-under-par 71 on the Olympic Club’s Lake Course.

“I didn’t think that score was out there,” said Reid, who very much is out there, in more than one definition.

“I’ve got a lot more scars on my body than most of the girls,” Reid told Golf Monthly of Britain.

And for Gay Pride Week, in the city where the event is historically celebrated, she has a golf hat with a rainbow logo.

The 33-year-old Reid, from the Midlands of England, came out as a lesbian last fall, just before she came to the United States. Her pal and adviser is four-time major champion Brooks Koepka, now a Florida neighbor.

Her game is to be admired. So is her attitude. She showed up Monday and, after practice, said of the same Olympic course that had others fearful, “This is how a U.S. championship should be, really tough. If you shoot even par around here, you’ve got a really good chance of winning the tournament.”

She knew at the last men’s Open at Olympic, in 2012, Webb Simpson won at 1 over.

“I think it’s going to be a great test,” she predicted. The course that got the best of Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson in men’s Opens always has been.

Maybe no female golfer has been tested as often or in so many ways as Melissa Reid. Nine years ago, Reid’s mother was killed in a car crash en route home from one of Mel’s tournaments in Germany. Unsettled and also uncertain about her sexuality, she went a bit wild, partying and rarely practicing.

But she regained her bearings and her game, although going without a win more than three years she was left off the 2019 European Solheim Cup team, a considerable blow to her confidence and ego.

But with Koepka’s advice and with her own determination, Reid played herself into the spot as England’s best female golfer, a position she didn’t hurt with the first round she’s ever played in a U.S. Open.

“Level par should be winning this thing in my opinion,” she said. “I love how tough it is. These are the kind of golf courses we want to play.”

You love how tough Reid is. She kept her sexuality as secret as possible while playing in Europe, worried that she would lose financial support if it became an issue.

“I protected my sexuality for a long time,” she told the Times of London, “because I thought I had to in order to help my career and to get more sponsors.

“Then I started to wonder why these companies would want to sponsor me and have me represent them if I couldn’t be my authentic self. There is only one of you in the world and you have one life, so be the best version of yourself and be proud of who you are.”

She definitely can be proud of her game.

“I think if you play well,” Reid said, echoing a long-held belief, “you get rewarded. If you don’t, you can get punished very quickly.”

Koepka, who won back-to-back men’s Opens and PGAs, well understands that and has been able to make Reid understand it as well.

“I texted Brooks on Tuesday,” said Reid. “We had a long conversation, then we FaceTimed. He gave me a few things he follows in a major. What he told me was invaluable, and it made me have a little different approach.”

An approach that was very successful.

Koepka seems as much a contradiction as a champion

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By Art Spander
For Maven Sports

FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — Brooks Koepka seems as much a contradiction as he is a champion, someone whose fame doesn’t seem to match his game, a golfer who has won more big events in a shorter time other than Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods but hasn’t connected with the people.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2019, The Maven 

Now Tiger knows how others once felt

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By Art Spander
For Maven Sports

FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — Now he knows what it was like. Now Tiger Woods understands how the others felt when he was the man, dominating golf. Woods still can play. As we found out last month in the Masters, which he won. But it’s not like before.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2019, The Maven 

For Tiger, was it a last hurrah or a hint of the future?

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By Art Spander

ST. LOUIS — Who knows where it goes from here? In a way, who cares? This might have been a last, wonderful hurrah for Tiger Woods, the PGA Championship in the humidity and enthusiasm of Middle America.

Or maybe it was a hint about a future that, at moments, could make us remember his past.

But it doesn’t matter. What does matter, for the game and for the golfer, is that for a week there were reminders of the way it used to be.

And a year ago, who dared imagine that would be possible? Not even Tiger.

Three weeks ago, he stirred emotions by working his way into the lead on the final day of the British Open before slipping to sixth, which was impressive, all things considered.

Then, here at Bellerive, green, lush and water-logged, so different from the links in Scotland, Woods played an even better major.

He shot 64 on Sunday, the final round of the 100th PGA Championship, and had the enormous crowd engaged and hopeful — and, of course, cheering loudly. The roar after a Tiger birdie rumbled across the fairways almost to the banks of the Mississippi.

The tournament in the end would belong to Brooks Koepka, who with a second major in a single calendar year, after the U.S. Open, and a third major overall, including consecutive Opens, right now may be the best golfer on the globe.

He has the long game and, perhaps more importantly, the short game and the poise. Koepka finished with a 4-under-par 66 for a 16-under total of 264, to win by two shots over, yes, Tiger Woods. Welcome to 2000.

Woods closed with a 6-under-par 64. He was holing putts and pumping his fist — and pumping up the fans. He dropped a long one at 18. He was a contender. He finished ahead of Adam Scott, Justin Thomas, British Open winner Francesco Molinari and Jordan Spieth, who in our tendency to exaggerate we’ve called the next Tiger Woods.

Ahead of everyone except Koepka.

But it was the former and current Tiger Woods who made this PGA thrilling. And surprising.

Woods was a question after the two back surgeries, the second to fuse a part of his spine. He needed to change his swing. He was 43, coming off months of inactivity and rehabilitation.

“At the beginning of the year, if you would say, yeah, I have a legitimate chance to win the last two major championships,” Woods conceded, “with what swing? I didn’t have a swing at the time. I had no speed. I didn’t have a short game. My putting was OK.

“But God, I hadn’t played in two years, so it’s been a hell of a process for sure.”

There’s a sporting axiom that greatness is forever. Age and injury may have an effect on performance, but a champion is always a champion. Tiger, we found out in the last few weeks, is still Tiger. In the hunt, he’s a factor.

What is different is this Tiger smiles and slaps hands with spectators, as he did walking up the ramp from the 18th green. We didn’t know if he would be back. He didn’t know. They say you don’t appreciate something until you don’t have it.

What Woods had during the PGA, especially the captivating last round, was a belief that this is where he belonged, high on the leader board, and striding purposely toward a goal that so many doubted ever would be attainable. It was fun. For him. For everyone.

“Oh, you could hear them,” Woods said of the fans. “They were loud, and they stayed around. It’s been incredible with the positiveness. They wanted to see some good golf, and we produced some good golf, I think, as a whole. The energy was incredible.”

It flowed from Brooks Koepka, from Adam Scott and most of all from Tiger Woods.

“I’m in unchartered territory,” said Tiger about his game, “because no one’s ever had a fused spine hitting it like I’m hitting it. I’m very pleased at what I’ve done so far. Going from where I’ve come to now in the last year, it’s been pretty cool.”

As they used to yell, you’re the man.

Koepka still trying to prove he belongs

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By Art Spander

ST. LOUIS — Yes, Brooks Koepka has an attitude. He also has a game, and in sports — maybe in life — that’s a wicked combination. You’re determined to prove you belong. You have the skill to show that you do belong.

Koepka is a back-to-back U.S. Open champion, arguably one of the three or four best golfers in the world. But it isn’t so much what he’s done that keeps him pushing, but what was done to him.

“I can think of plenty of people along the way telling me I’d be nothing," said Koepka the other day, “working at McDonald’s, doing things like that. The whole time, you’re just trying to prove them wrong.”

Which he has done overwhelmingly.

After matching the lowest round ever at a PGA Championship, a bogey-free, 7-under-par 63 on Friday at Bellerive Country Club, Koepka is high on the leader board with half the tournament remaining.

“I’m just very much in the zone,” he said. “Very disciplined.”

And very driven, which every athlete needs to be.

“Growing up, in college,” said Koepka, “through right when you turn pro, there’s always people who are going to doubt you, say you can’t do it. Even know you’re just trying to prove everybody wrong. That’s the way I view it.”

The way he was viewed by some others was as a kid with a temper. At Florida State, he slammed more than one club to the turf. But all that intensity kept him from surrendering when things went wrong, as they often do in golf.

It’s a maddening game, one without teammates. The frustration builds. On Friday, while Koepka was shooting his 63, Bubba Watson, a two-time Masters winner, shot 78, 15 shots higher. That’s why golfers, no matter if they are touring pros or hackers, never are more confident than the next shot.

Koepka, 28, became a golfer truly by accident. A car crash when he was a boy kept him from playing contact sports. At 6 feet tall and 186 pounds, he looks like an athlete and would prefer to be hitting baseballs over fences than golf balls down fairways. The former major leaguer Dick Groat is a great uncle.

“If I could do it again, I’d play baseball — 100 percent no doubt,” he told Jaime Diaz of Golf Digest. Then again, he said that before winning his first U.S. Open at Erin Hills in June 2017.

Koepka failed in his first attempt to qualify for the PGA Tour. Then, instead of going the usual route, the secondary Dot.com Tour, triple-A minors you might say, he joined the European Tour. It was a grind, in unfamiliar locations with different foods, but it helped toughen Koepka.

An injured wrist kept Koepka out of the Masters, and all golf, this past spring. He said all he could do was sit on the bed and watch others play on TV.

“It was disappointing,” he said, “but when you take four months off, you really appreciate being able to play, and you’re eager to get back. I kind of fell back in love with the game. I just missed competing. It can get a little bit lonely when you’re just sitting on the couch.”

Since returning from Europe and joining the PGA Tour in 2012, Koepka has won only three times. Indeed two of the wins were in the U.S. Open, but you’d presume a player with his skill and grit would have several more.

“I’m not thinking about that when I’m out there,” Koepka insisted. ”I’m just trying to win this week. That’s the thing I’m worried about, winning this week and taking that and moving towards the playoffs.”

Halfway through the 100th PGA Championship, you like his chances. And no, to answer your question, he never did work at McDonald’s.

Newsday (N.Y.): British Open: Americans Jordan Spieth, Brooks Kopeka, Matt Kuchar lead after first day

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By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

SOUTHPORT, England — This first round of the 146th British Open was less about weather Thursday, although there was a wee bit of rain and considerable wind, than it was about names, big names.

Three of the biggest, Americans Jordan Spieth, Brooks Koepka and Matt Kuchar, each shot a five-under par 65 at Royal Birkdale to top an impressive leaderboard.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2017 Newsday. All rights reserved.

S.F. Examiner: Brooks Koepka claims first major title with US Open win

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By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner

ERIN, WIS. — It wasn’t the Olympic Club or Pebble Beach, sites of history. It was Erin Hills, derisively nicknamed “Errant Hills.” But if the course wasn’t memorable, a place scraped from Wisconsin pastureland, the game Brooks Koepka played there definitely was.

A 27-year-old who literally became a golfer by accident — a car crash when he was a boy kept him from playing contact sports — Koepka on Sunday won America’s golfing championship, the U.S. Open, in a record-tying performance.

Read the full story here.

©2017 The San Francisco Examiner