Nobody Is Harder on Brooks Koepka Than Himself, and That May Be Key to Another Major

The five-time major winner has a casual vibe that hides an inner fire which has powered him through golf's peaks and valleys—and now has him in a prime spot to defend at the PGA Championship.

Brooks Koepka will try to win his sixth major title this week at Valhalla. / Reinhold Matay-USA TODAY Sports

Brooks Koepka emits such a casual, aloof vibe that the notion he cares little about the game he excels at certainly carries some weight. Killer Koepka, the major championship stalker, has come to be his signature. So, too, the idea that he doesn’t sweat the small stuff.

But to think that Koepka is indifferent to golf is far too simplistic an observation. He might be O.K. with not piling up a ton of victories outside of the major championships, but it’s those big tournaments that make or break his disposition.

And after a disappointing tie for 45th last month at the Masters, where Koepka was never really contention a year after tying for second, he stewed. The game that had seemingly been on track to at least contend for a sixth major title just a few weeks earlier went missing. Having pointed toward the year’s first major since December, Koepka felt he wasted four months.

Koepka went to the Augusta National range following a third-round 76 and was there with one of his coaches, Pete Cowen, until nearly dark. Frustration was evident.

“Brooks has been pretty good at timing things up,’’ says his dad, Bob Koepka. “But I talked to Pete after that and he said, 'if the Masters was three weeks ago, it would be a totally different story.’ He was flushing everything and I think he peaked early. A little flaw came in and he wasn’t covering the ball like he used to.”

That’s golf. It happens. Not everybody is going to have it every single time. Not even Scottie Scheffler, who heads into this week’s PGA Championship at Valhalla in Louisville, Ky., as a prohibitive favorite to win the title that Koepka claimed a year ago at Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, N.Y.

But Koepka, 34, hardly shrugged it off after that Masters setback. A year earlier, he stayed up into the night talking to one of his friends about what went wrong when Jon Rahm overtook him during the final round and five weeks later captured the PGA, winning his fifth major title to join some elite company—only 14 players in the history of the game have won more major titles and he’s one of just 20 with five or more.

After the Masters this year, Koepka was annoyed because he didn’t even give himself a chance. He told his team it was all on him.

“I’ve never let him them down like I did at Augusta,” he told his dad. “So I put myself in penalty workouts every day to show that I’m going to work my butt off to get back to where I need to be.”

Yep, Brooks Koepka decided to punish himself. Penalty workouts.

It carried over into his time in Australia at LIV’s Adelaide event. And again a week later in Singapore, where he won his fourth LIV event, the most of any player in the three-year existence of the league.

“He expects more out of himself than anyone would think,” Bob Koepka says.

A litany of health issues, and a move to LIV

And yet, that is rarely the perception of Koepka. He won four major championships—the 2017 U.S. Open, the 2018 U.S. Open, the 2018 PGA and the 2019 PGA—in such quick succession that he looked nearly unbeatable in the game’s biggest tournaments.

During that time, he had a chance to win the Masters in 2019—he finished a shot behind Tiger Woods. He finished second to Gary Woodland at the 2019 U.S. Open He also was in contention going into the final round of the 2020 PGA Championship before faltering in the final round. He played in the final group with Phil Mickelson at the 2021 PGA Championship, finishing second and had top 10s at the remaining majors that year. And then his close call at last year’s Masters.

“He really rose up and it could be seven or eight,” Bob Koepka says. “It exceeded all of our expectations.”

But while Koepka amassed this amazing major record, he was ordinary in regular PGA Tour events—and has been at times in LIV Golf events. One of the amazing things about Woods is he didn’t discriminate. He wanted to win the majors more than anything but he picked off the regular events at a huge rate, too. But before he joined LIV, Koepka had those four majors—and just four other PGA Tour titles.

Brooks Koepka's last win as a PGA Tour member was the 2021 WM Phoenix Open. / Arizona Republic-USA TODAY NETWORK

Back during that incredible run of big victories in a 23-month span, Koepka was blunt. “I just practice before the majors,” he said. “Regular tournaments, I don’t practice. If you see me on TV, that’s when I play golf.”

It seems there is far more to it than that, but Koepka was more or less admitting that he wasn’t much removed from those perceptions.

During a hectic LIV media and photo session earlier this year, Koepka was taking a break between responsibilities and getting a bite of lunch while talking with a reporter about his major run of a few years ago, the subsequent injuries that derailed him, the uneasy time when he signed with LIV Golf that had him wondering about his future, and then his resurgence last year with his major championship victory.

And that subject of his outward aloofness comes up. Koepka sometimes emits a vibe that he can’t be bothered and so it is fair to wonder just how much he loves golf.

“There’s been a transition, I think,” Koepka says. “When I first started playing, I loved golf, I loved everything about it. I care a lot and the fact that, in my head, I don’t practice enough goes against what you might see. If you come out and watch me, you’d think I might out-practice a lot of guys. But to me, I don’t do enough.

“I’m lazy. And the past two years I was fat and overweight. I physically couldn’t do it. And it for frustrating and it probably didn’t look like I loved it.

“But it was fun as a little kid. You grow up and want to play golf. It’s a dream. Then you see the business side. There’s this deal, there’s this shoot, there’s this meeting. It becomes a job. And it transitions from a fun game at the club with your buddies and having a few beers. That’s not the golf we play out here. My Challenge Tour days were the most fun because it wasn’t a job to me then.”

Koepka was referencing the time when he played on the European Tour’s developmental circuit, criss-crossing Europe, winning tournaments in places such as Spain, Italy and Scotland and visiting more than a dozen countries.

It was a long way from ascending to No. 1 in the world, winning multiple majors in a three-year span, suffering significant injuries that made him wonder about his golf future, and making the controversial move to sign with LIV Golf two years ago, suffering the wrath that came with that decision.

“I felt unbeatable,” Koepka says of the time from winning the 2017 U.S. Open through 2020 (and that includes missing the 2018 Masters due to a wrist injury). Winning breeds confidence. The more you win and the bigger event you win the more confidence you have. It’s pretty simple.

“We only have four events a year that are like our Super Bowl. Whatever team wins the Super Bowl, they are having a great time. Same with the World Series. Any of those guys who won a major last year are in the conversation as among the best players. You look at Rahm, myself, Scottie Scheffler ... and they’ve been there for a while too.”

The thing that separated him then, he says, was his ballstriking.

“But a big thing has been health, too,” Koepka says. “Things got off. I think I’m doing something but I’m not. Then we try to correct it. Then I have to get my body right. And I’ve created bad habits. Then you’re trying to get out of those bad habits and very quickly you end up in a hole. What am I doing? It’s still the same stuff. Health was a big issue.”

Koepka first had issues with his left knee in the fall of 2019 when he slipped on a cart path at the CJ Cup in South Korea. He ended up missing the Presidents Cup and later had stem cell treatments.

He then had hip problems in 2020 which plagued him at the PGA Championship played that year in August. And the following spring, he dislocated his right knee cap in a freak accident at home only a month before the Masters. He attempted to play anyway, barely able to walk or bend over to read a putt, and missed the cut. He ended up having surgery.

“By far that was the worst one,” he says. “The surgery I had had never been done before. It was a crazy thing and it was not ideal.”

Amazingly, Koepka contended at the PGA Championship that spring, finishing second to Mickelson and was tied for fourth at the U.S. Open and tied for sixth at the British Open.

But the knee started to bother him more as the year went on and he suffered another injury to his wrist during the Tour Championship. By the following spring, things had gotten worse and Koepka was struggling. He needed recovery time as well as the ability to strengthen the areas around his knee. And it wasn’t happening fast enough.

He missed the cut at the Players Championship and the Masters and tied for 55th at the PGA Championship. He endured a tense news conference at the U.S. Open when he was peppered with questions about LIV Golf a week after it had played its first event—with his brother, Chase—in London.

Koepka’s testy responses didn’t make it any easier, and a week later he became the latest high-profile LIV signee, later admitting that the guaranteed money was a hedge against his uncertain future.

“I felt like I couldn’t play golf the way I wanted to play golf,” he says. “That was the only reason why I wasn’t sure if I was going to keep going. I don’t think many people knew. It took me a year and a half to get my knee to be healthy. I was like, “If I walked Augusta three weeks after, O.K. , I can walk the golf course. I can play.” That was my mindset. But are you actually healthy and I wasn’t.”

Time for major No. 6?

Koepka spent a relatively miserable first few months with LIV Golf. He was the captain of a new team which meant he’d get equity if it was ever sold, but his golf wasn’t great and his interview as part of Netflix's Full Swing documentary suggested he was not only unhappy but not too keen on his golf future.

He missed the cut at the Open and in his first five LIV events had just a single top 10, a tie for ninth in Thailand. Finally, a week later, he won for the first time in a playoff over Peter Uihlein. Played in Jeddah, the event was missed by most of the golf world, but it was a sign for Koepka that he was on his way back.

“His form wasn’t there because his body just didn’t allow him,” says Ricky Elliott, Koepka’s longtime caddie. “Then you’re not really contending for a few month, you’re probably going to get down. That’s what it was, really.

“I suppose (LIV) was one of those things where he wanted to play and compete and I suppose the extra time off was a way to get his body right. Maybe a bit of not being able to compete crossed his mind. But he was just a long way from being fit. And he needed a confidence boost.”

That came with the win in Jeddah, and a reasonably good start to the 2023 season, which saw him win LIV’s event in Orlando the week prior to the Masters.

After opening at Augusta with a 65 to tie Rahm, Koepka got a lot of queries about finding his game, about being back, even about his future in major championships due to his association with LIV and the inability to earn Official World Golf Ranking points.

“Once you feel good, everything changes,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve rediscovered anything. I just think I’m healthy.”

Koepka was good enough to play in the final group with Rahm at the Masters but struggled after returning Sunday for the completion of the third round and then the final round. He led by four when weather halted play, was still ahead by two through 54 holes but was out of sorts during the final round.

He finished second to Rahm by four shots, shooting 75. All credit to Rahm (who shot a final-round 69), he said, but Koepka was mad at himself for the way he handled it, vaguely implying that he was not aggressive enough but not disclosing what he figured out.

“I got close and I tasted it,” he says. “Obviously I was super disappointed and not happy about it. Felt like I played good enough to win. Didn’t. Bad Sunday. I figured out why. ‘Alright I’m never going to let that happen again.’ It was a mental thing, a mistake that’s easily corrected. Mental mistakes are so preventable. If you think this way and it’s been successful, and switch one time and it fails and it flops.

“I flew home with my best friend (Dan Gambill) and we stayed up until 8 a.m. We talked through every shot from the moment I got to the course through 18. Every shot. Everything. It’s difficult when you’re in the moment. But he could hear it, and you see things. We finished talking and I walked upstairs and texted the rest of my team. “We’ve got this. I figured this out. We’ll be good at the PGA.”

Five weeks later, Koepka was holding the Wanamaker Trophy.

The 2023 PGA Championship was major No. 5 for Brooks Koepka. Is No. 6 imminent? / Adam Cairns-USA TODAY Sports

It was his third PGA title and fifth major overall, putting him in elite company, the only active player not named Tiger or Phil with that many majors. And it was at the same place where Elliott had caddied for him the first time 10 years earlier.

Back then, Koepka was a fledgling player on the Challenge Tour. Elliott, who is from Graeme McDowell’s hometown of Portrush, Northern Ireland, was in between bags but came highly recommended.

They worked together that week but had no arrangement for anything beyond that.

“I remember telling Brooks, you better work something out with him if you like him. He’ll be in demand,” Bob Koepka says.

That was never a problem on Elliott’s end. “I’m not going anywhere. Not the way you hit the ball,” he said to Koepka.

More than a decade on, Koepka has a chance to make some more history. A sixth major would put him in some rare air, alongside Lee Trevino and Nick Faldo.

The victory in Singapore saw him make just two bogeys for the week, both of them via three-putts. It was a good boost and gives him momentum heading to Louisville. Perhaps the timing is right again.

Bob Koepka, back in Florida, texted his son after the first round to offer some support and congratulations on his strong play.

Brooks Koepka wasn’t satisfied.

It was time for another penalty workout.