Brooks Koepka has played in three majors this season.
He won two of them.
“If you win two majors, you got it. It’s not real complicated.”
That was the testimony of Tiger Woods on Tuesday, giving his nod of approval to Koepka as 2018 Player Of The Year.
Which begs the question:
Can the Player Of The Year bring his major championship focus to the playoffs?
Koepka has admitted that he’s lacked that kind of focus in regular PGA Tour events. But the next three weeks then the Tour Championship at East Lake are not regular tour events.
We’re talking $10 million bucks on the line and that in and of itself is plenty big enough to get the attention of these strolling millionaires.
So what we have this week is the start of the Yellow Brick Road with that giant pot of moolah waiting there at East Lake.
So first guy up this week was of course Tiger Woods. Tiger basically sucks all the attention from any event he plays in, and that will be even more true this week considering it’s been five long years since he’s shown up in the playoffs. To which young studs like Koepka can quietly go about their business and Brooks is especially quiet as he goes about his business. All he does is crush the ever-living daylights out of his tee shots and they are pretty damn accurate on top of that. Add in superb iron shots and good touch on the greens and it is easy to understand how he won two majors and will be everyone’s Player Of The Year, including Tiger’s.
The course conditions at Ridgewood should be to his liking as well. Wet fairways, soft greens. It becomes a putting contest and Brooks can sure win a putting contest when he wants to.
Therein lies the four magic words when it comes to Brooks: When He Wants To!
Momentum is not a problem.
How does out-dueling Tiger Woods down the stretch sound if you’re looking for ye olde momentum? Brooks didn’t flinch one iota even with the pandemonium up ahead of him. After collecting the Wanamaker, he simply referred to it as “Tiger’s little run.” Think Koepka fears Tiger for one minute? Think again.
Not sure anyone out there can scare Koepka, certainly not when he’s anywhere near his best.
Does he fear his buddy D.J.? Obviously not. He’s basically run circles around the world’s No. 1 player this summer, if anything, all D.J. has to show for this summer is a Canadian Open win. He was no factor in the final three majors. And D.J., like the Forrest Gump box of chocolates — well, you never know which D.J. you’re going to get.
Not sure anyone in the top 10 can scare Koepka. He doesn’t play golf that way. He does his own thing and because of his quiet personna, he doesn’t bring attention to himself.
This playoff parade will get underway on Thursday without Rory McIlroy, without Rickie Fowler and minus Henrik Stenson. Note that Stenson is a former FedEx winner.
As for McIlroy, he’s working on his game — he needs to because his wedge play sucks and his putting isn’t a whole lot better.
Rickie? Well, the bad news is that muscle tears don’t heal very quickly and you can bet a couple of bucks that Rickie’s main concern is the Ryder Cup. There’s always the FedEx for a guy like Fowler, wouldn’t be the end of the world if he’s not at East Lake. It would miff him to miss Paris.
Which brings us back to the big, quiet kid.
Koepka.
Yeah, it’s no stretch to say he’s the guy to beat in all these playoff events.
He’s the biggest threat — if he wants to be.
