This article is part of our Weekly PGA Recap series.
He hits the ball, as they like to say, a country mile. He hits it straight. His temperament is so measured, so level-headed, even in the most high-pressure moments, that it can appear he doesn't care. We're talking of course about Dustin Johnson, the No. 1 golfer in the world. But we're now also talking about Brooks Koepka.
Koepka, Johnson's good buddy and workout partner, won his second straight U.S. Open on Sunday. He did it not only in very Johnson-like fashion, he did it while playing alongside Johnson in the penultimate pairing of the day. Frankly, he out-DJed DJ.
All of which makes us wonder even just a little bit: What has Johnson done? He took the younger and far less successful Koepka under his wing, or at the very least into his world. And look at what he/they have created.
To be sure, Koepka has oodles of talent all on his own, a former all-American at Florida State and the 2014 European Tour Rookie of the Year. But every professional golfer – heck, every professional athlete – has talent. They need something else to separate themselves. Interestingly, for years Johnson had the most talent on the PGA Tour, and won often, but never majors and didn't come close to reaching his potential. Then along came Wayne Gretzky into his life, and the switch flipped.
We're not saying Koepka wouldn't have gotten to this level without Johnson. Or maybe we are. Johnson surely is part of the Koepka story,
He hits the ball, as they like to say, a country mile. He hits it straight. His temperament is so measured, so level-headed, even in the most high-pressure moments, that it can appear he doesn't care. We're talking of course about Dustin Johnson, the No. 1 golfer in the world. But we're now also talking about Brooks Koepka.
Koepka, Johnson's good buddy and workout partner, won his second straight U.S. Open on Sunday. He did it not only in very Johnson-like fashion, he did it while playing alongside Johnson in the penultimate pairing of the day. Frankly, he out-DJed DJ.
All of which makes us wonder even just a little bit: What has Johnson done? He took the younger and far less successful Koepka under his wing, or at the very least into his world. And look at what he/they have created.
To be sure, Koepka has oodles of talent all on his own, a former all-American at Florida State and the 2014 European Tour Rookie of the Year. But every professional golfer – heck, every professional athlete – has talent. They need something else to separate themselves. Interestingly, for years Johnson had the most talent on the PGA Tour, and won often, but never majors and didn't come close to reaching his potential. Then along came Wayne Gretzky into his life, and the switch flipped.
We're not saying Koepka wouldn't have gotten to this level without Johnson. Or maybe we are. Johnson surely is part of the Koepka story, though.
Regardless, Koepka is now up to No. 4 in the world, ahead of Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy, Jason Day and Rickie Fowler, and a year ago that was just unfathomable.
So what to make of this win by Koepka?
There are so many thoughts whirling around in our heads that it's hard to know where to begin, So, stream of consciousness:
He just won his second straight U.S. Open. Very few guys have done that. Not Tiger Woods, not Jack Nicklaus. Koepka appears to be the perfect archetype for winning U.S. Opens. The word "robotic" comes to mind. Any mistake he made on the back nine on Sunday he recovered from and/or minimized. So impressive. But it's conflicting because he has won only one other tournament, at Phoenix in 2016. There are extreme cases of guys winning majors but nothing else. Those guys weren't ranked No. 4 in the world. When Koepka won the 2017 Open at Erin Hills, it seemed like an outlier because the course seemed like an outlier. But we should've seen at least something coming, and very few of us did. Because now in his past 15 majors, Koepka has two wins, seven top-10s and 13 top-25s. He won this Open soon after missing three and a half months with a wrist injury. He had played only 18 rounds of golf before the Open. So you have to wonder where he'd be if he hadn't missed all that time, if he'd be higher than No. 4. You can see him passing Justin Rose for third, but do we really see him in the rarefied air of 1-2 with Johnson and Justin Thomas? That's a tough one.
Exhale.
While we want to say this will open up the world for Koepka, that he will continue to win titles and majors – he was sixth last year at the British – we just don't know. We all like to take snapshots in sports: As soon as someone wins, he/she is great; as soon as someone loses, he/she sucks. What we do know is that Koepka was top-10 in the OWGR even before Sunday, and that was after having won only once in more than two years and after having been injured for an extended period.
As long as Koepka stays healthy, he'll be in the top-10, which means he'll continue to amass high finishes. Whether he ascends to No. 1, well, that's a much tougher call.
But if Koepka comes even closer, it will be interesting to see how his relationship with Johnson moves forward.
MONDAY BACKSPIN
Phil Mickelson
Oh, Phil. Oh, Phil. Oh, Phil. It's been regurgitated endlessly since Saturday. But we'll throw our two cents in and move on. From a completely unrelated-to-fantasy viewpoint, very disappointing. It was so wrong of Mickelson to hit that ball while it was moving and it was so wrong that he was allowed to continue in the tournament. Golf likes to tell everyone it holds itself to such high standards. What do they say now? This won't have any effect on Mickelson in future tournaments; he's amid a great bounce-back season. But we will note that he has just one top-15 in his past 12 majors – that epic duel he lost to Henrik Stenson at the 2016 British.
Tommy Fleetwood
Fleetwood shot a record-tying 63 on Sunday to leave Koepka little room for error. The Englishman is still only 27, younger than Koepka, and it appears he too will win a major soon. Perhaps even next month at Carnoustie. Fleetwood's tee-to-green game is among the best in the world, which is well suited for both Opens, where the grind is so hard that putting can take a bit of a backseat. That said, Fleetwood putted great on Sunday. He tends to have trouble with the three-footers.
Dustin Johnson
Coming off a win at Memphis, Johnson led much of the tournament before winding up solo third. Losses never seem to affect him, but it will be interesting to see whether this one is different, because of his closeness to Koepka and how he'll be reminded of it every day. While we won't predict a major, we could see Johnson winning again this season to cement his No. 1 ranking.
Patrick Reed
Reed let a share of the Sunday lead slip away to end up solo fourth. After never doing squat in majors, Reed has now gone runner-up/win/fourth in his past three majors. And that is scary good. Sometimes guys just need to play on Tour awhile and find their footing. That appears to be the case with Reed. He's among a rather strong group of golfers who will be playing this week at the Travelers. No reason to expect he won't do well there.
Tony Finau
Finau began the day in that unlikely final pairing with Daniel Berger. He was in the mix until the end, and a final double bogey dropped him to solo fifth. Finau is not as good as Fleetwood, but he's like him in the sense that he can excel in some of the more demanding tests in golf because he's so sound tee to green. As with Fleetwood, putting is the weakness. That's why he hasn't won a "real" PGA Tour event – his lone win was in the opposite-field Puerto Rico Open two years back.
Daniel Berger
The fact that Berger was in the lead after 54 holes of the U.S. Open – he wound up tied for sixth – was perhaps the biggest surprise all week. He'd been having a horrible season. Zero top-10s. Just trunk-slammed at Memphis, where he was the two-time defending champion. These things happen in golf, and in sports – things happening out of the blue. It's not gonna make us think that Berger will be better the rest of the season. For now, we're treating it as an aberration.
Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Jason Day
What a bloodbath on Friday, as all four of these top-10 guys missed the cut. Spieth is the most troubling because he's been sub-par and winless all season long. He plays this week at the Travelers, where he's the defending champion, but don't be blinded by that. McIlroy did win at Bay Hill in March, and we guess he could contend at Carnoustie, but bad things have been happening to him at majors lately. For Rahm, it was another poor showing in a major after breaking through with a top five at Augusta. We might need to reconfigure our thinking of him. Day has been having iron trouble all season, but he's a two-time winner in 2018. He's also playing this week at the Travelers. We have higher hopes for him this week than Spieth, but he needs to straighten out his approach shots big-time to avoid another major missed cut at the British.
Tiger Woods
We talked earlier about taking snapshots. We all were on burst mode back in February and March, when Woods sent Twitter afire with a 12-T2-T5 trip through the Florida Swing. But now we need to re-adjust our view, after his horrible two days at Shinnecock Hills. Woods is No. 79 in the world, and he hasn't budged much from that range in the past couple of months. He's missing with his driver and with his putter, which tends to be a real problem on the PGA Tour. Getting into the top-50 to qualify for the WGC-Bridgestone at his beloved Firestone in August seemed a mere formality. Now, he probably has only two chances to get there, the National in two weeks and then the Open at Carnoustie. And it doesn't look good. Don't fall victim to Tiger-pricing. Last week, he was the ninth-highest-price guy on the DraftKings board. Crazy.
