Winning Majors Was Once Easy for Rory, Brooks and Jordan, Until It Wasn't

We are living in a golden age of major hot streaks, Michael Rosenberg writes, but they're fleeting.

When we wonder why Rory McIlroy hasn’t won a major in nine years, maybe we should ask Brooks Koepka.

When we want to know how Koepka could make winning major championships look easy for three years, and then suddenly forget how to close, maybe we should ask Jordan Spieth.

When we are mystified by Spieth winning 75 percent of the career grand slam by age 24, and 0 percent in the six years since, maybe we should go back to McIlroy.

McIlroy, Koepka and Spieth are three of the most accomplished and interesting players of this era. Their career arcs help explain the modern professional game. As they made their way around delightfully renovated Oak Hill in the first round of the PGA on Thursday, they were each chasing something that they once held so firmly, it looked like they would never let go. But of course they did.

This is hard to quantify, but we are living in a golden age of major hot streaks. I mean isolated major hot streaks—stretches when an excellent player looks like the next coming of Tiger Woods. So Tiger’s hot streaks don’t count, because he actually was Tiger Woods.

Historically, men who win three majors tend to do so over a long period of time. There have been exceptions—Nick Price won all three of his majors in a nine-major stretch—but not many. For most of golf history, a great player would give himself enough chances, and cash in on enough of those, to accumulate an impressive haul of majors over the course of his career. Some struggled to win majors when they were young (Phil Mickelson) or in what should have been their late prime (Arnold Palmer, Tom Watson), but they very rarely did what Koepka, McIlroy and Spieth have done.

Because golf is ultimately a solitary mental and emotional pursuit, they have each looked inward to find what they lost. Koepka has blamed his balky knee—legitimately, but also, I think, because he wants to believe any failure is entirely injury-related. Admitting he lost his swagger is painful for him. McIlroy seems to have the opposite problem: He is so determined to be in the right mental space that he probably overthinks it, so the quest is self-defeating. Spieth, who probably makes par from the parking lot when he plays mini-golf, has battled swing and putting issues, but always expects to figure it all out because he always has.

Blaming themselves is an odd offshoot of the confidence that great players must have: If the problem is you, then you can fix the problem. But on some level, this is not about McIlroy, Koepka and Spieth failing to win majors; it’s about what spurred those incredible runs in the first place.

So many talented players are committing to fitness and using advanced technology—not just Pro V1s and Stealth drivers, but TrackMan and video—that the differences among elite players are smaller than ever. A player fighting his swing with a persimmon driver used to have no chance, but now more players can squeeze an acceptable score out of a lousy round.

In that environment, confidence is everything. The player who is utterly convinced he will win has the best chance. Koepka, McIlroy, Spieth and Collin Morikawa stunned us with their early-career dominance, but in a way, it was easier for them then because failure had not infected their perspective. They believed in themselves on a fundamental level that is impossible to replicate now, because they have experienced too much.

Koepka knows he tried to get in Dustin Johnson’s head at the 2020 PGA and took himself out of the tournament. Spieth knows he can’t really summon magic whenever he needs it. McIlroy is a complicated case, but it’s fair to say that he does not play with the purity of purpose that he once did. He cannot just leave his worldliness and awareness of history in the locker room.

They finished the first round at +1 (McIlroy), +2 (Koepka) and +3 (Spieth). They each still have a chance to win, but they are also a long way off from their peaks, when every major looked like theirs to win, and any level of confidence seemed rational.