1. The year of the Brooks
While the coverage split is likely 60/40 Tiger Woods to Brooks Koepka following BK’s second major win of 2018, imagine if Woods weren’t in the mix. We’d be crowning Koepka the next Woods…or at least we should be.
- Absolute bomber off the tee. Well-rounded game. Steady, stellar on the greens under pressure. Koepka is a golfing juggernaut with a flatline pulse. Simply, he’s built to win modern golf tournaments on today’s PGA Tour.
- Cameron Morfit called the strong-jawed masher of the golf ball an “invisible superstar.” “He has boulder shoulders, buttery hands, and the guts of a burglar,” Morfit writes.
- “Brooks just doesn’t draw attention to himself,” Florida State men’s golf coach Trey Jones, who recruited Koepka to Tallahassee, said while watching the telecast Sunday. “That’s just not his personality. When he won the U.S. Open the first time he didn’t do the media tour. When he won it the second time, he didn’t do the media tour. He just does his own thing.
- Morfit writes “It’s gotten so bad that Jack Nicklaus, who himself played second banana to Palmer all those years ago, tweeted that Koepka was being unfairly overlooked and, “doesn’t seem to get press or credit he deserves. A great young talent. Strong, aggressive, smart golfer. Likely force to be reckoned w/for years to come. Should be in every conversation about today’s best!”
2. Also: That Tiger guy
Tiger Woods’ final-round 64 left him two strokes behind Brooks Koepka, as everyone reading this newsletter well knows. There’s plenty of writing about Woods’ weekend performance, but ESPN.com’s Ian O’Connor may have penned the best perspective piece thus far.
- “Woods was going to celebrate a loss for once in his glorious sporting life. He made that 19-foot birdie putt that he knew in his heart wouldn’t topple Brooks Koepka, and then Tiger responded at Bellerive as if he had just won his fifth green jacket at Augusta National.”
- “At a surgically altered and emotionally scarred 42 years of age, three weeks after nearly winning The Open at Carnoustie, Woods shot a 64, his best score ever in the final round of a major. His 130 over the closing 36 holes only set a PGA Championship record. He finished at 14-under, two strokes behind Koepka, and the shame of it is he might’ve lost the tournament on his first two holes Thursday, when he opened with bogey and double-bogey before ducking into a portable toilet and exchanging his sweat-soaked shirt for what appeared to be a superhero’s cape.”
- “On some levels, this has been Tiger’s most remarkable season yet. He hasn’t added to his 79 tour victories, but who cares? He was a hopelessly broken man and athlete a little more than a year ago. After a decadelong majors drought, he nearly won The Open and the PGA back to back. Woods didn’t just produce heart-stopping drama for millions of fans praying for his comeback to take us all to an unimaginable place.”
- He might’ve just produced the most dramatic non-championship sports season since the 2007 New England Patriots lost their bid for perfection in Super Bowl XLII.
Then there’s this from Tiger putting things in perspective after his round.
- “I didn’t know what my schedule would be. I didn’t know how many tournaments I would play this year or if I would even play. So each tournament brought about its own challenges. I didn’t know what the number was going to be this year. I didn’t know how I was going to play. And so at the beginning of the year, if you would say, yeah, I would have a legit chance to win the last two major championships, I, with what swing? I didn’t have a swing at the time. I had no speed. I didn’t have a golf swing. I didn’t have – my short game wasn’t quite there yet. My putting was okay. But God, I hadn’t played in two years. So it’s been a hell of a process for sure.”
3. Something special
Golfweek’s Martin Kaufmann penned this assessment of the coverage of what was surely a well-watched PGA Championship.
- “I have never had so much fun watching nine holes in my life,” CBS’ Gary McCord chortled midway through the final round of the PGA Championship.
- “McCord chortles often when simple statements would suffice, and he’s given to hyperbole. But there’s no denying that Tiger Woods and a stacked leaderboard can make for compelling television.”
- “The PGA Championship kind of felt like old times, even if, in this instance, Woods had to settle for second…There’s always something special when Tiger is in the mix,” Sean McManus, chairman of CBS Sports, told me immediately after the tournament. “What he did today was almost historic. It was terrific and it was spellbinding. The combination of what he did with what Brooks Koepka did and the way he hung in there made for unbelievable drama.”
- “Lead analyst Nick Faldo often seems to wing it when he and anchor Jim Nantz open the show, but he had a pretty good line about Koepka at the top of Sunday’s coverage…”He’s like a cruise liner,” Faldo said. “He’s on a path and he creates a wave, and everyone is stuck in the wave behind him.”
- Woods and Adam Scott almost crested that wave and caught Koepka. The result was one of the most memorable PGA Championships in years – perhaps the best since Martin Kaymer’s playoff win in 2010.
- “The biggest gripe I hear each year with regard to the PGA Championship is the heavy load of commercials relative to the other majors. It’s a legitimate gripe, but it’s also an issue that falls largely at the doorstep of the rightsholder, in this case the PGA of America. Bigger rights fees translate into more commercials.”
…and of course, the poverty of Thursday/Friday coverage.
4. Two-putter Scotty
Adam Scott finished three strokes behind Brooks Koepka, playing his final five holes in one over par.
- What you may not have seen or heard mentioned on the telecast, however, is that Scott had two flatsticks in the bag.
- Golf Digest’s E. Michael Johnson: “According to Titleist, Scott had two putters in play on Thursday and Saturday as well, but never used the shorter putter. Scott is known for using his broomstick Scotty Cameron by Titleist center-shafted Kombi Long mallet, but also has a conventional-length Scotty Cameron by Titleist 340, often referred to as a Newport 2 Timeless.
- “The company also confirmed that Scott carried two putters last week at the WGC-Bridgestone. Scott, who usually carries three wedges in addition to his pitching wedge (52-, 56- and 60-degrees), made room for the club by going with just a 54- and 60-degree wedge.”
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TONEY P
Aug 13, 2018 at 1:38 pm
The PGA Championship was great ???? to watch. Good win Brooks. Do the LGPA Ladies have agents. That is their job to support for them.
Mike R
Aug 13, 2018 at 12:13 pm
LPGA not getting free equipment? I am sorry, but there is no where near the draw of PGA. Why is it expected that there would be equal return? The manufacturers don’t see the value in providing free equipment unless they perceive a payoff. With the limited draw of the LPGA, in TM’s case, they want people to see their drivers. That is their bread and butter. Not out of the question that they try to steer players that direction. I don’t feel one bit bad for her, she can afford it.
8thehardway
Aug 13, 2018 at 2:01 pm
It’s more a matter of how little a manufacturer thinks of the LPGA that they didn’t extend the smallest professional courtesy to a top player who used their hybrids and fairway woods for 5 years.