It would be foolish to doubt Brooks Koepka, a man with five majors who has repeatedly pocketed little bits and used them to fuel some of his greatest achievements on the golf course.
But it would also be foolish to see him now, in this current moment, as the world-beater he once was. Something’s wrong. Ignoring that would be foolish. So what surprises Koepka as he plays his third PGA Tour event since breaking away from LIV Golf? Broadcasters talked about it during the broadcast of its season debut. It’s that putter. The old An.
Koepka’s performance in his first tournament back (at Torrey Pines) showed a man with a decent driver and a very solid iron game. Around the greens, Koepka was adept at getting up, but not so much at coming down. The Scotty Cameron blade-type putter he used throughout his career was so clumsy in San Diego that it finished last in Strokes Gained: Putting of all the gentlemen who made the cut. For context, he finished twelve shots behind second-place Ryo Hisatsune and eleven shots behind him using just the putter.
While the golf world was probably inclined to cut him some slack, Koepka wasn’t ready to continue with the status quo. A week later, he showed up in Phoenix rocking something completely different – a flat stick shaped like a hammer – and openly admitted during his press conference that something needed to change. “I’ve been pretty bad the last two years,” Koepka said. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I have to find out.”
He didn’t lie. Koepka was, at best, a top-5 putter in the world. During his big winning peak, he was consistently above Tour average, a healthy baseline that left him room to win when the putter got extra hot for a week.
His immediate results with the hammer were not much better. Koepka missed the cut in Phoenix, where his Strokes Gained results were again well below the week’s average. But as he said on Wednesday, perhaps we shouldn’t have expected quick results. Koepka estimated he hit about “300 putts” with that hammer — a TaylorMade Spider TourX — before putting it in the bag.
“But now that we can get two weeks of work done and make some adjustments, things should be a lot better,” he said Wednesday morning in Florida. Getting a new putter to go, in that sense it sounds a bit like wearing a new pair of shoes. The more time you have to break them in, the better they will feel, but there is a learning curve at first.
“I didn’t know exactly where I hit it,” he said, “and obviously when you change putters, speed becomes something completely different. I felt like the speed was a little bit off.”
“Now I understand exactly where to hit it and where it’s going. I feel like my speed control has gotten better, and with just a few changes I can clean those things up.”
As we’ve learned in his few tournaments, Koepka didn’t waste any words in his explanations. As always, he wants his game to get the most attention. We are especially curious about what his putter has to say. This week we have at least two more listening rounds. Maybe even four.
This week he’s playing near his home in south Florida. Barring a top-two finish, Koepka will not qualify for next week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational, meaning he will have a week off before a busy schedule resumes. He is currently listed in the field for the Players Championship, the Valspar Championship and the Houston Open.
Plenty of time to warm up his putter before the major championship season begins.
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