PGA Championship: Brooks Koepka's big lead douses fire of competitors
Brooks Koepka looks over his second putt on the 18th green during the third round of the PGA Championship on Saturday. Credit: Peter Frutkoff
So great were Brooks Koepka’s accomplishments these last three days at Bethpage Black, that some of the best golfers in the world merely shrugged their shoulders or wrung their hands, and not much anything else.
There were some, such as Rory McIlroy, who were visibly wowed by the performance. And there were others, such as Adam Scott, who couldn’t help but point out the obvious truth: With Koepka dominating the competition to this extent, there’s not a whole lot one can do.
“Any birdie you make doesn’t really matter,” Scott said, with good-natured nihilism, after finishing his round. “There’s nothing really pushing you.”
That’s not generally the sort of thing you hear in the hyper-competitive world of professional golf, but that’s because these last three days haven’t turned out to be much of a competition. Koepka’s performance — just a par 70 Saturday, which doesn't matter much after opening with a 63 and 65 — has made Bethpage something of a 7,400-yard coronation tour.
“It's awesome,” McIlroy said. “It's so good. It's great to watch. I watched most of it yesterday afternoon. He's definitely, in these events, playing on a different level than most anyone else.”
Rickie Fowler echoed that sense of respect, though he wouldn’t go so far as to call it intimidation.
“We've always looked at Brooks as one of the best players out here and I feel like it's more of a level of respect,” he said. “It's not necessarily, you know, scared of him or anything . . . He's not coming trying to hit me or anything. If Brooks was going to try and hit me, I'd want him on my side.”
Rob Labritz, one of only three club professionals to make it past the Friday cut, joked that Koepka is “why I’m a PGA professional.”
“I don't want to go up against Brooks Koepka week-after-week [on the PGA Tour],” he said.
There is a general sense that Sunday will be a competition for second.
“You’ve gotta tee off with hope,” said Scott, who is 3 under and tied for eighth. “[But] the focus obviously is not winning, it's just to go out there and shoot a great score and try to have a good finish in a major and take something out of the week. That's where I'm at the moment.”
The Koepka Effect went a little beyond just admiration or even frustration. Xander Schauffele said seeing Koepka's performance Thursday, when he set the course record with his 63, made other golfers think that maybe they could do that too (so far, none have). The way Harold Varner III described it, it was almost inspiring. You know, in a sort of infuriating way.
“If you don't go to sleep and think, man, this makes me want to work harder, if I can be that good, then I don't know why you're playing,” said Varner, who is in a four-way tie for second and seven strokes behind Koepka. “I don't know, you can't sit there and just weep and be like, he's so much better. I think that's going to push you. It almost [ticks] me off. That's what I think.”
Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.
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