Two-time champion Brooks Koepka withdraws from the U.S. Open

A nagging knee injury will keep Brooks Koepka from playing the U.S. Open next week.

The U.S. Open won’t have one of the favorites in the field when the tournament begins at Winged Foot next week.

Brooks Koepka, dealing with an injury to his left knee that’s bothered him since last year, withdrew from the tournament on Wednesday, citing a desire to get back to full strength.

“Unfortunately, I have decided to withdraw from next week’s U.S. Open,” Koepka wrote in a message posted on social media. “I’m looking forward to getting healthy and competing at 100% again very soon.”

Koepka’s absence will be sorely missed. He’s dominated the championship over the last three seasons. In 2017 at Erin Hills, he tied the tournament scoring record of 16-under on his way to his first major championship victory.

The next year at Shinnecock Hills, he became the first player since Curtis Strange in 1989 to win consecutive U.S. Open titles. He nearly pulled off the three-peat— a feat done only once before, by Willie Anderson in 1905—at Pebble Beach in 2019, finishing runner-up to Gary Woodland.

Koepka is 25-under the last three years at the U.S. Open, the best three-year span in tournament history. But he hasn’t looked like his old self in 2020. Koepka has just two top-10 finishes on the PGA Tour this season.

Koepka has gone from fourth in scoring average last year to 58th, from 11th in strokes gained: approach to 47th. His driving distance has declined nearly seven yards from his peak in 2018. He’s missed five cuts, two more than in 2018-2019 combined.

Koepka admitted after the Tour Championship in 2019 that he had been suffering from a knee injury all season. He underwent a stem cell procedure on the knee following the CJ Cup in October that kept him out for three months. But, even after he returned to the tour in February, the knee still didn’t feel any better.

“Nothing is improved. It’s still the game,” he said in July, according to Golf.com. He last played at the Wyndham Championship four weeks ago, withdrawing from the FedEx Cup playoffs.

He won’t get a chance to add a third U.S. Open trophy to his collection next week, but the rest of the golf world will be in Mamaroneck, just outside of New York City, when the tournament begins on Sept. 17.