AUGUSTA, Ga. — A U.S. Open broke out this weekend at Augusta National, so it’s unsurprising that the finest Open player of the past decade embraced the type of grind known to test head and heart as much as technique. Brooks Koepka has won the Open twice, finished in the top four three other times, and won a couple of PGA Championships at USGA venues. Few athletes are better suited to tough examinations, and no other potential winner at the 87th Masters would better exemplify the contradictions and conundrums in elite golf these days.
He isn’t Jay Monahan’s dream champion — and probably not Fred Ridley’s either — but nor is he an ideal winner for Greg Norman, who prefers more malleable and docile types as his promotional playthings for LIV Golf.
He has long maintained friendly relations with the commissioner of the Tour he left, but not of the one he joined.
He has won four major championships, but in each instance refused to join a show-and-tell trot around television talk shows to promote the victory, and by extension the organizations and tour that would benefit from such. Barring a contractual obligation to be pimped — which is feasible given the straitjacket terms of LIV paperwork — Koepka’s preference for retreating to celebrate with his inner circle bodes ill for any effort by Norman to enlist him as a spoil of war.
He’s a man who said on Friday that he’s happy with his decision to sign with LIV, but admitted in the same breath that the decision would have been tougher had he been healthy, a subtle but damning indictment that the circuit’s top player viewed it as a cash-out.
He’s a guy who loves nothing more than trash-talking in the heat of competition, who fancies himself an NBA-style stud but finds himself in little-watched exhibition games with the Riyadh Globetrotters when he now knows he can still beat the world’s best.
He would be an asset on either tour, yet thirsts for a competitive high that is found only in majors, a sentiment he has voiced often. The PGA Tour couldn’t slake it, and LIV won’t either. Tour golf — any tour — is what Koepka uses for reps, not motivation.
He could pick up a check Sunday for $3.24 million, less than the $4 million he earned last weekend in a LIV event but also less than the top prize in a dozen PGA Tour events this season. Majors once led the way in purses and stature, but the cash arms race has far outpaced what the uppermost tier of golf excellence can cobble together.
He’s one who enjoyed being the center of attention, whether with his clubs or his keyboard. His small wins in the combative arena of social media brought him almost as much pleasure as his major ones, but playing a tour with more critics than viewers means his recent victories were hailed chiefly by bots and trolls, not genuine fans.
He is evidence that LIV has highly competitive players in its ranks, but a Masters victory would highlight the question of how long that will remain so if LIV’s best are only tested against the rest in majors, an arena that fewer of the Saudi-funded circuit’s players can access over time. Guys like Koepka and Cam Smith remain relevant in spite of LIV, not because of it.
Golf’s tweedy traditionalists — a constituency oversubscribed in the member ranks at Augusta National — may blanch at the notion of Koepka in a green jacket, and with good reason. He has little patience (and sometimes open disdain) for the country club set and their elaborate rules and protocols, a milieu perfectly distilled here in Augusta. He is too easily dismissed as all swagger and sneers, more biceps than brains. It’s an image Koepka cultivates, but one that falls far short of a true picture of the man. He is engaging company with a bruising sense of humor, and LIV-allied or not he would be a better role model than a good many ex-champions at the Masters, a list that includes cheats and an incarcerated abuser.
Count that as just another of the many contradictions that will be drawn in sharp relief if he earns a green jacket on Sunday. This isn’t a man who competes for a tour, for a commissioner, or for the privilege of being tokenized.
One thing hasn’t changed in the golf landscape: wherever he plies his trade, Brooks Koepka plays only for Brooks Koepka.
