Brooks Koepka isn’t thinking about a rare PGA Championship three-peat

Brooks Koepka can join Walter Hagen as the only players to win the PGA Championship three straight years, but that’s not what he’s concerned about this week at TPC Harding Park.

Walter Hagen was America’s first true golf superstar. “The Haig” was stylish and flamboyant. In an age where professional golfers were considered low-brow hustlers and only amateurs were allowed into clubhouses, Hagen made it into a respectable profession. He was instrumental in the formation of the Professional Golfers Association of America.

Hagen also has another distinction: He’s still the only golfer to win the PGA Championship three straight years. He won the tournament five times, including every year from 1924-27.

Brooks Koepka has a chance to join Hagen this week at TPC Harding Park. Koepka heads into the season’s first major championship as the two-time defending champion, winning at Bellerive in 2018 and Bethpage Black last year. A win this week would make him the first player since the PGA Championship went to a stroke play format in 1958 to pull off a three-peat; Hagen did it when the event was still match-play.

It’s a familiar spot for the former world No. 1. He nearly three-peated at the U.S. Open last June, finishing runner-up to Gary Woodland at Pebble Beach. He wasn’t too concerned about what a victory would mean in terms of his history in the game then, and he’s still not focusing too much on it this week.

“I’ve already dealt with it at the U.S. Open going into Pebble,” he said on Tuesday during his pre-tournament press conference. “I feel like I know how to handle it, and I played pretty well there. Just got beat.”

Koepka’s hyper-competitive style has proven to work best in major championships. Of his seven career PGA Tour titles, four of them have come in majors. But Koepka has spent most of the 2020 season not looking like a player who’s ready to compete in the sport’s biggest events.

A lingering knee injury has bothered Koepka since last fall. He had stem cell injections in September, but that hasn’t caused the problem to go away. As he continued to battle the injury, his play took a precipitous drop from the heights he was at in 2019 at Bethpage and Pebble. Before the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational last week, his last three results on tour were two missed cuts and a tie for 62nd.

After missing the cut at the 3M Open two weeks ago, though, Koepka got back with his coach Pete Cowen for the first time since March. He also began working with a putting coach, Phil Kenyon. The results in Memphis were immediate: Koepka was 137th on tour heading into the tournament in strokes gained: approach but led the field last week. He finished tied for second behind Justin Thomas, his first top-five since the Tour Championship nearly a year ago.

Throughout his struggles, Koepka always believed he was close to returning to the player he was just a short time ago. “It gets frustrating,” he said. “I felt like I was playing a little bit better. Wasn’t seeing the results but piece by piece it was coming, so I knew it was eventually going to be there. As for confidence, I got frustrated. I think anybody would. Nobody likes playing bad. But at the same time, I knew I was only a couple of swings away. Once I got the feeling I would be off and running, and here we are.”

TPC Harding Park plays right into Koepka’s strengths. The course will play long in the cool, thick Northern California air. The rough is lush. Only someone with the power of Koepka can hope to hit the green from some of the spots players will find themselves in off the tee this week.

It would be a historic triumph if he manages to lift the Wanamaker Trophy on Sunday. Just don’t tell him that, for Koepka is only focused on one thing: a long-overdue return to the winner’s circle.