Tony Finau and Brooks Koepka were paired together for the opening match of the 2018 Ryder Cup.
FRANCK FIFE/AFP via Getty Images
Throughout his career, Brooks Koepka has thrived in big moments. As the winner of five major championships, all since 2017, he has easily been the most prolific player at golf’s biggest events over the past decade.
He has also performed well in his four Ryder Cup appearances. In addition to sporting a winning record of 7-6-2, he hasn’t lost a singles match, going 2-0-2 despite playing in three tries for the USA loss.
That is all to say, he would be unlikely to shy away from hitting the opening ball in the hostile environment of an away Ryder Cup.
But how Tony Finau recently discovered in a YouTube video with content creator Grant Horvat and reposted by the popular Instagram account @ziregolf, Koepka once relinquished that honor.
argue, who is making his third President’s Cup appearance this week for Team USA, is asked to recall his favorite Ryder Cup memory, which ended up revolving around the decision for him to hit the first tee shot. 2018 matches in France.
“(Captain) Jim Furyk asked me when I wanted to go and Brooks and I would pair up together and we’d be like, ‘Yeah, we’d like to go first,'” Finau said. “Brooks comes up to me and says, ‘You want to hit your first tee shot?'”
Finau, then 29, playing in his first Ryder Cup as captain, did not want to steal the honor from his partner.
“No, I’ll do that honor for you,” Finau said.
But Koepka persisted.
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“No, let me rephrase that,” was Koepka’s response. “You’re going to hit the first tee shot.”
This meant that Finau would not only have the honor when he and Koepka played in their match, but since it was the first match of the opening day, he would host the entire event.
The 2018 Ryder Cup was also the last Tiger Woods was a part of, having also won a captain’s choice and later breaking a five-year winless drought at the Tour Championship just a week earlier.
Woods had a strong crush on Finau when he learned in a team meeting that night that the rookie would hit the first ball of the entire match.
“The tiger looks at me, and he says, ‘Don’t screw it up, kid,'” Finau recalled. “That’s all he said.”
The next day was the weather and the atmosphere, Finau said, was like nothing he had experienced before.
“I got to the first tei, 10,000 people around. (Michael Jordan) is there. Michael Phelps. “These guys are watching everybody,” he said. “There’s so much energy and then all of a sudden, as soon as I picked up the ball, it was like you could hear a needle.”
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And luckily for him, Woods and the rest of their team, Finau rose to the occasion.
“I end up stripping him,” Finau said proudly. “I had so much adrenaline. It was 45 degrees at 7:30 in the morning and I ended up hitting this 3-iron like 290. It was smoking right down the middle. It almost went into the water, however, at the 300-yard mark. But I was very mesmerized.”
Finau and Koepka won their opening four-ball match against Justin Rose and Jon Rahm and the USA took the morning session 3-1. But the Europeans swept the afternoon session and ended up reclaiming the Cup in a 17.5-10.5 rout of the Americans.
Koepka had the worst Ryder Cup performance of his career, going 1-2-1, while Finau was one of the few bright spots for the Americans, going 2-1-0 in his first matches. But Finau holds that memory as an example of his and Koepka’s close bond.
“Brooks will always be a friend to that,” Finau said. “He will always be in my good graces. Not only that, but like our wives are good friends, like he’s just a friend for that.”
