Brooks Koepka won his fifth major championship at Oak Hill on Sunday.
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ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Ten seconds.
That’s all it took for Brooks Koepka to strike the finishing blow at the PGA Championship.
As he played the 16th hole on Sunday, Koepka had distanced himself from the rest of a stacked field to the point where only one contender remained. He’d begun the day a shot ahead of a rabid chase pack; now only Viktor Hovland remained, 8 under par to Koepka’s 9.
Both players blocked their tee shots right of the fairway but Koepka’s just carried the bunker and nestled into the rough. Hovland’s settled in the bunker, where he drew an awkward lie: the ball was below his feet and a high bunker lip directly in his way. Things went sideways from there; his 9-iron never got close to clearing and line-drived into the face of the bunker instead. The ball embedded in the grass wall, cruelly staring back at him, his tournament hopes suddenly buried half underground.
Brooks Koepka won the PGA in 10 seconds — but it hurt to get there
Brooks Koepka won his fifth major championship at Oak Hill on Sunday.
GETTY IMAGES
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Ten seconds.
That’s all it took for Brooks Koepka to strike the finishing blow at the PGA Championship.
As he played the 16th hole on Sunday, Koepka had distanced himself from the rest of a stacked field to the point where only one contender remained. He’d begun the day a shot ahead of a rabid chase pack; now only Viktor Hovland remained, 8 under par to Koepka’s 9.
Both players blocked their tee shots right of the fairway but Koepka’s just carried the bunker and nestled into the rough. Hovland’s settledinthe bunker, where he drew an awkward lie: the ball was below his feet and a high bunker lip directly in his way. Things went sideways from there; his 9-iron never got close to clearing and line-drived into the face of the bunker instead. The ballembedded in the grass wall, cruelly staring back at him, his tournament hopes suddenly buried half underground.
While Hovland spent the next several minutes trying to sort out how to take a drop — he was entitled to relief for a plugged lie but it was tough to figure out where that relief would be — Koepka stood motionless up ahead, occasionally glancing back in his direction but mostly staring off into the distance. Eventually they sorted through it, Hovland dropped into a bad lie in the rough and was forced to chop out sideways into the fairway.
Koepka’s caddie Ricky Elliott had taken the wedge from his hands a few minutes into Hovland’s ruling, just to make sure his guy could reset. Now he gave it back. And so, just 10 seconds after Hovland’s ball came trickling to a stop, Koepka sent his soaring toward the green. It happened so fast the crowd was caught by surprise. It happened so fast the cameras hadn’t gotten into position. It happened so fast it almost felt dismissive, like part of Koepka was disappointed the competition was over with two and a half holes still to play.
Koepka likes it when golf reminds him of other sports, so let’s go there: This was a hockey player slowly skating in an empty-netter to put his team up two. This was a basketball player scooping a bad pass and laying one in as time expired. This was a cornerback catching a game-ending interception and savoring a few extra steps before taking a knee. The rough had tortured golfers all week but felt like an afterthought here; Koepka’s ball landed on the front of the green, chased towards the back pin and settled just four feet from the hole. Game over.
Ten seconds isn’t much time at all.
But Koepka had already waited far too long.
Seen and Heard at The PGA Championship | Episode 6: Moving Day
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00:21
Saturday was moving day at the 2023 PGA Championship. Rainy and sloppy conditions made the already tough Oak Hill Country Club got even tougher. The GOLF.com crew pushed through the elements to take it all in. We caught up with the darling of the PGA Championship Michael Block, saw Josh Allen sing Happy Birthday and checked out who was getting post-round practice at the range.
HIS FIRST MAJORdidn’t come early. Not at age 21 like Jordan Spieth nor at 22 like Rory McIlroy. But once Koepka won one — the 2017 U.S. Open, as an under-the-radar 27-year-old basher — the next few came awfully quick. He outdueled Dustin Johnson in the 2018 U.S. Open at Shinnecock. He outdueled Tiger Woods in the 2018 PGA Championship at Bellerive. He held off Johnson in the 2019 PGA at Bethpage. The thing about major championships is that when you win one, people wonder if you’ll win two. When you win four, people wonder if you’ll win 10.
But when you’ve won four it’s not just tough to win 10. It’s tough to winfive. Koepka had earned his reputation as a cold-blooded closer, but in the years that followed he logged a series of near-misses. At the 2019 U.S. Open he finished runner-up. At the 2020 PGA he talked a big game but couldn’t back it up.Phil Mickelsonstared him down in the final group of the 2021 PGA, ushering in a year of not-quites: he finished inside the top six at the next two majors, too. He was still a big-game hunter. He just wasn’t inevitable.
Then came 2022, and with it came injury and poor play. As it turned out, things could get much worse than a tie for sixth place. In four major starts, Koepka logged two missed cuts and two 55ths. Doubt consumed him. Athletes never know when the end is coming; was it possible it had already arrived?
Netflix’s cameras followed Koepka at a particularly low moment in the aftermath of a Masters missed cut. Suddenly the whole world saw Koepka with his armor off; we saw how hard it hurt to struggle and how desperately he yearned for a return to the top. He admitted he “couldn’t compete.” He said he’d give up all the money he’d won just to feel that major-champion rush for 10 more minutes.
By the time he spoke to the media on Sunday he’d been back atop the mountain for at least a half-hour. But he acknowledged that whatFull Swingshowed was very real. More than that: he was glad they did.
“I know I seem like this big, bad, tough guy on the golf course that doesn’t smile, doesn’t do anything, but if you catch me off the golf course, I’ll let you know what’s going on,” he said. “Like, I’m happy they got that side; right? That’s truly me, and some people might hate it, some people might dog it, but at the end of the day, it’s just me.”
Just how bad was it? Koepka said he stopped short of making retirement plans, but…
“If I couldn’t play the way I wanted to play, then I was definitely going to give it up,” he said. “I mean, the thought definitely kind of crossed my mind.”
THINGS GOT BETTER— but also worse — at the Masters this April, when Koepka began Sunday four shots ahead of Jon Rahm but finished the day four shots behind him. His health and his form were both massively encouraging. But his final-round wilting was just the latest chapter in a yearslong trend.
To his credit, Koepka didn’t shy away from the reality of what had happened. He stared it in the eye trying to figure out why.
“Look, I learned from it,” he said. “I’m very pleased with what I took from it, and I’m pleased with the honesty I was able to dive into.”
Koepka and his best friend stayed up most of the night talking through the day. His buddy didn’t hold back. Whatever lessons they settled on — Koepka wouldn’t spill details — proved valuable come Sunday.
“He was texting me all last night about it and making sure that I wouldn’t fall in the same trap,” Koepka said.
It didn’t.
KOEPKA’S APPROACHinto No. 2 — a 162-yard short-iron to four feet — set the tone for the day. A 212-yard missile to four feet at the next hole kept it going. A wedge shot to nine feet at the par-5 fourth made it three in a row. Oak Hill was more receptive than it’d been all week, but still: the leader wasn’t supposed to make things look this easy.
It never is, of course. Hovland matched his birdie at No. 4 and clawed one shot back with a birdie at No. 5. Then Koepka showed his first sign of weakness on the sixth tee, push-slicing driver into the swamp down the right side. Another bogey at No. 7 kept Hovland within one and brought several more chasers into play; Scottie Scheffler, Bryson DeChambeau and Rory McIlroy were within shouting distance.
Koepka birdied 10 but bogeyed 11. He birdied 12 but then watched Hovland birdie 13 — and holed a curling 10-footer for par just to maintain his one-shot lead. He hit a mighty tee shot at the drivable par-4 14th, tapping into his combo of power and precision and setting up an easy two-putt birdie. Then he and Hovland traded pars at 15, setting up the sudden kill shot at 16. Koepka was thrilled with the approach and even more pleased with the putt, a slippery curler that fell in the middle, pushing his lead to four.
“I’m just happy that one went in. I think it was a little momentum boost,” he said, typically understated. “Gave me a little ease going into 17, 18.”
All that was left was planning the celebration. Tonight he’s eager to get home. But tomorrow?
“I would say tomorrow with the [Florida] Panthers game, it will probably be a large tailgate,” he said. “A long afternoon.”
KOEPKA WAS RELUCTANTto put this one into full perspective so soon after the final putt had dropped. He’d need a couple days, he said. Later he changed that to a week. But it was clear his mind was already processing in real time. He was grateful to his doctors. To his family. To his caddie.
“I felt bad for him that he was stuck with me there for awhile,” Koepka said of Elliott. “He was tired of me; I was tired of him. I don’t know if he gets enough credit for being as good of a caddie as he is. Caddying is a lot about reading the people, reading your player, knowing what they are going to do before they even do it and kind of sense the moment of what to say, what not to say.”
It was clear, too, that this one meant so much because of how hard it’d been since the last one.
“Pardon my language, but it’s all the f—- s— I had to go through,” he said. “No one knows. No one knows, I think, all the pain. There’s a lot of times where I just couldn’t even bend my knee.”
Much will be made of Koepka’s win as the first major title for an active LIV golfer. That’s significant for the professional golf landscape, but that felt like a footnote in the face of what it meant for Koepka.
“Yeah, I definitely think it helps LIV, but I’m more interested in my own self right now, to be honest with you,” he said. This isn’t his only recent win; he was the first LIV pro to win twice on the startup circuit. But Koepka has always echoed his childhood hero, Tiger Woods, in placing the majors above everything else. Now he’s back.
“This is probably the sweetest one of them all because all the hard work that went into,” he said. Later he said it even more succinctly. He’s never been one to waste time, after all.
Dylan Dethier is a senior writer for GOLF Magazine/GOLF.com. The Williamstown, Mass. native joined GOLF in 2017 after two years scuffling on the mini-tours. Dethier is a graduate of Williams College, where he majored in English, and he’s the author of18 in America, which details the year he spent as an 18-year-old living from his car and playing a round of golf in every state.
Koepka, the four-time major champ who’s long played his best in the sport’s biggest events, couldn’t hang on to win at Augusta National last month, falling to Jon Rahm’s comeback victory. On Saturday night at Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, N.Y., Koepka vowed whatever happened when he slept on that lead that night in Georgia wouldn’t take place again.
“What I learned at Augusta kind of helped today,” he said. “Like I said, I won’t do it again the rest of my career. … I’ll never have that mindset or that won’t ever be the reason.”
Seen and Heard at The PGA Championship | Episode 6: Moving Day
00:00
00:04
Saturday was moving day at the 2023 PGA Championship. Rainy and sloppy conditions made the already tough Oak Hill Country Club got even tougher. The GOLF.com crew pushed through the elements to take it all in. We caught up with the darling of the PGA Championship Michael Block, saw Josh Allen sing Happy Birthday and checked out who was getting post-round practice at the range.
He declined to elaborate on what exactly that mindset was. All we know is his plan worked.
Golf’s most dominant m
Golf’s most dominant major player of the past decade returned on Sunday, shooting a three-under 67 to win the PGA Championship and claim his fifth major title. It’s Koepka’s third PGA title (he also has two U.S. Opens), and he’s now one of 20 players to win at least five majors in a career.
“This is probably the sweetest one of them all just because of all the hard work that had to go into this one,” he said. “It’s special.”
Kopeka’s nine-under total bested World No. 2 Scottie Scheffler (65) and Viktor Hovland (68), Koepka’s playing partner, by two.
The 33-year-old Koepka, who joined LIV Golf last year and is now the first LIV player to lift a major trophy, opened the day six under, one ahead of Hovland and Corey Conners and three up on Bryson DeChambeau, but he still had some of the game’s biggest names — like Scheffler (four back) and Rory McIlroy (five back) — lurking.
No lead seemed safe, either. Remember last year? Justin Thomas came from seven back on Sunday to win his second PGA Championship.
But Kopeka rarely flinched. Early in his round, he went from a big betting favorite to an apparent sure thing, making birdies on Nos. 2-4 to extend his lead to three at one point.
The rest of the contenders started slowly, and Hovland did too with three straight pars, but he eventually found his rhythm with birdies at 4 and 5.
Koepka’s first blemish came at 6, when he cut a drive into a penalty area. He did well to make bogey from there, but Hovland got up and down from the bunker and sank a clutch eight-footer for par to cut the lead to one.
Koepka made his second straight bogey on the 7th when he failed to get up and down around the green, but Hovland didn’t pick up any ground. He drove it in the thick stuff, was forced to whack it out to wedge range and couldn’t save his par.
After two straight pars, Koepka led at seven under at the turn, Hovland was six under and Scheffler and DeChambeau were both four under.
A birdie on 10 gave Koepka his two-stroke lead once more, but up ahead Scheffler was heating up. The 2022 Masters champion opened his round with six straight pars, but he made four birdies in a seven-hole stretch from Nos. 7-13. But Koepka responded. Coming off a bogey on 11, Koepka birdied 12 when he rolled in an 11-footer.
The lead, again, was two over Hovland and three over Scheffler, with six holes remaining for the final pairing and five for Scheffler. Suddenly, it seemed like a three-horse race — and it was about to get even tighter.
On the par-5 13th — the only par-5 on the back nine — Hovland made birdie, while Scheffler birdied 14 for his second straight. Koepka, who made a 10-footer to save par (one of his key moments of the day), led Hovland by one and Scheffler by two. The next closest competitors were five off the pace.
Koepka and Hovland traded birdies on 14 and pars on 15, but the 16th was the final dagger.
“I couldn’t see what was going on, but I had a pretty good idea,” Koepka said. “It was buried under the lip, which was unfortunate.”
Koepka stepped to the 17th tee leading by four. Or, as on-course reporter Dottie Pepper framed it, “About 1,000 yards to the Wanamaker.”
Scheffler birdied 18 and Koepka bogeyed 17, so the lead was two with one to play, but an easy two-putt par sealed it.
Koepka’s latest Wanamaker Trophy joins the others he won in 2018 and ’19, and his U.S. Open trophies from 2017 and ’18.
He never finished better than 55th in last year’s majors and missed the cut in two of them, but he recently unveiled just how much he was struggling with his knee, his confidence and his swing. A runner-up finish at the Masters suggested the old Koepka was back.
Koepka, the four-time major champ who’s long played his best in the sport’s biggest events, couldn’t hang on to win at Augusta National last month, falling to Jon Rahm’s comeback victory. On Saturday night at Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, N.Y., Koepka vowed whatever happened when he slept on that lead that night in Georgia wouldn’t take place again.
“What I learned at Augusta kind of helped today,” he said. “Like I said, I won’t do it again the rest of my career. … I’ll never have that mindset or that won’t ever be the reason.”
Seen and Heard at The PGA Championship | Episode 6: Moving Day
00:00
00:04
Saturday was moving day at the 2023 PGA Championship. Rainy and sloppy conditions made the already tough Oak Hill Country Club got even tougher. The GOLF.com crew pushed through the elements to take it all in. We caught up with the darling of the PGA Championship Michael Block, saw Josh Allen sing Happy Birthday and checked out who was getting post-round practice at the range.
He declined to elaborate on what exactly that mindset was. All we know is his plan worked.
Golf’s most dominant major player of the past decade returned on Sunday, shooting a three-under 67 to win the PGA Championship and claim his fifth major title. It’s Koepka’s third PGA title (he also has two U.S. Opens), and he’s now one of 20 players to win at least five majors in a career.
“This is probably the sweetest one of them all just because of all the hard work that had to go into this one,” he said. “It’s special.”
Kopeka’s nine-under total bested World No. 2 Scottie Scheffler (65) and Viktor Hovland (68), Koepka’s playing partner, by two.
The 33-year-old Koepka, who joined LIV Golf last year and is now the first LIV player to lift a major trophy, opened the day six under, one ahead of Hovland and Corey Conners and three up on Bryson DeChambeau, but he still had some of the game’s biggest names — like Scheffler (four back) and Rory McIlroy (five back) — lurking.
No lead seemed safe, either. Remember last year? Justin Thomas came from seven back on Sunday to win his second PGA Championship.
But Kopeka rarely flinched. Early in his round, he went from a big betting favorite to an apparent sure thing, making birdies on Nos. 2-4 to extend his lead to three at one point.
The rest of the contenders started slowly, and Hovland did too with three straight pars, but he eventually found his rhythm with birdies at 4 and 5.
Koepka’s first blemish came at 6, when he cut a drive into a penalty area. He did well to make bogey from there, but Hovland got up and down from the bunker and sank a clutch eight-footer for par to cut the lead to one.
Koepka made his second straight bogey on the 7th when he failed to get up and down around the green, but Hovland didn’t pick up any ground. He drove it in the thick stuff, was forced to whack it out to wedge range and couldn’t save his par.
After two straight pars, Koepka led at seven under at the turn, Hovland was six under and Scheffler and DeChambeau were both four under.
A birdie on 10 gave Koepka his two-stroke lead once more, but up ahead Scheffler was heating up. The 2022 Masters champion opened his round with six straight pars, but he made four birdies in a seven-hole stretch from Nos. 7-13. But Koepka responded. Coming off a bogey on 11, Koepka birdied 12 when he rolled in an 11-footer.
The lead, again, was two over Hovland and three over Scheffler, with six holes remaining for the final pairing and five for Scheffler. Suddenly, it seemed like a three-horse race — and it was about to get even tighter.
On the par-5 13th — the only par-5 on the back nine — Hovland made birdie, while Scheffler birdied 14 for his second straight. Koepka, who made a 10-footer to save par (one of his key moments of the day), led Hovland by one and Scheffler by two. The next closest competitors were five off the pace.
Koepka and Hovland traded birdies on 14 and pars on 15, but the 16th was the final dagger.
“I couldn’t see what was going on, but I had a pretty good idea,” Koepka said. “It was buried under the lip, which was unfortunate.”
Koepka stepped to the 17th tee leading by four. Or, as on-course reporter Dottie Pepper framed it, “About 1,000 yards to the Wanamaker.”
Scheffler birdied 18 and Koepka bogeyed 17, so the lead was two with one to play, but an easy two-putt par sealed it.
Koepka’s latest Wanamaker Trophy joins the others he won in 2018 and ’19, and his U.S. Open trophies from 2017 and ’18.
He never finished better than 55th in last year’s majors and missed the cut in two of them, but he recently unveiled just how much he was struggling with his knee, his confidence and his swing. A runner-up finish at the Masters suggested the old Koepka was back.
Josh Berhow is the managing editor at GOLF.com. The Minnesota native graduated with a journalism degree from Minnesota State University in Mankato. You can reach him at joshua_berhow@golf.com.
