It would be foolish to doubt Brooks Koepka, the man of five majors, who has repeatedly put on slippers and used them to fuel some of his greatest achievements on the golf course.
But it would also be foolish to see it now, in this current moment, as the world beater it once was. There is something wrong. To ignore it would be foolish. So what’s strange about Koepka as he plays his third PGA Tour event since breaking away from LIV Golf? The broadcasters talked about it during the broadcast of his season debut. It’s that shooter. of old one.
Koepka’s performance in his first tournament backfired (at Torrey Pines) showed a man with a good driver and a very strong iron game. Around the greens, Koepka was capable of getting up, but not so much on the downhill. The Scotty Cameron blade putt he has used throughout his career was so inconsistent in San Diego that he finished dead last in Strokes Gained: Putting of all the agents who made the cut. For context, he finished 12 strokes behind runner-up Ryo Hisatsune and 11 strokes behind him by just a shot.
While the golf world was probably inclined to cut it some slack, Koepka wasn’t ready to move forward with the status quo. He showed up in Phoenix a week later swinging something completely different — a hammer-style flat bat — and openly admitted at his press conference that something had to change. “I’ve been really bad for the better part of two years,” Koepka said. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I have to figure it out.”
He doesn’t lie. Koepka at his best was a top-5 shooter in the world. During his prime, he was consistently above the tournament average, a healthy baseline that left him room to win whenever the going got too hot for a week.
His immediate results with the hammer weren’t much better. Koepka missed the cut in Phoenix, where, once again, his Strokes Gained scores were well below average that week. But as he said Wednesday, perhaps we shouldn’t expect quick results. Koepka estimated that he hit about “300 shots” with that hammer – a TaylorMade Spider TourX — before putting it in the bag.
“But having two weeks to get the job done and make some adjustments, it should be a lot better,” he said Wednesday morning in Florida. Getting a new shooter going, in that sense, it sounds a bit like putting on a new pair of shoes. The more time you have to break them in, the better they feel, but there is a learning curve at first.
“I didn’t know exactly where I was hitting it,” he said, “and obviously when you change pitchers, the velocity becomes a different thing. I felt like the velocity was a little off.
“Now I know exactly where to hit it and where it’s going. I feel like my speed control has improved, and with just a few changes, I just fine tune those things.”
As we have learned in his few tournaments, Koepka did not mince words in his explanations. As always, he would like his game to do most of the talking. We’ll be especially curious to hear what his player has to say. We’ll have at least two more rounds to hear this week. Maybe even four.
This week he will be playing near his home in south Florida. Barring a top-two finish, Koepka will not qualify for next week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational, meaning he will have a week off before resuming a busy schedule. He is currently listed in the field for The Players Championship, Valspar Championship and the Houston Open.
There is plenty of time to warm up his ball before the big league season begins.
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