Brooks On Brooks

Given his steely on-course demeanor, you’d assume Brooks Koepka is a man of few words, a guy whose focus is on winning tournaments, not popularity contests. And to some degree you’d be right. But GOLF’s Player of the Year really wants his voice to be heard. So, Mr. Koepka, the tee box is yours.

- Sean Zak

The Year of Brooks Koepka looked pretty bleak back in April, when he and I sat down for lunch at the Floridian, his home club in Palm City. A wrist injury had taken Koepka off the Tour and put him on the couch for Masters week. He didn’t know when he was coming back. He didn’t know if he was coming back. But six months and two major victories later, here we sit, 30 miles south, at the Bear’s Club, recapping Koepka’s extraordinary 2018 Player of the Year campaign. Talk about a heel turn.

By late May, at Colonial, a fully recovered Koepka felt his game kick into gear. By mid August, he was polishing silver from wins at the U.S. Open and PGA Championship. His season ended in Paris, where misfortune at the Ryder Cup—Team USA’s devastating loss and a nightmare accident in which a French spectator was injured by a Koepka drive—showed him, once again, to be human indeed. This vulnerable Brooks is mystified— maybe miffed is the word—by what he perceives to be a lack of respect from the media and general indifference from golf fans. What gives?, he keeps wondering.

To let Brooks be Brooks, we gave him the mic. What follows is how he thinks, what he feels and, most importantly, where he’s headed. (Hint: The answer has the number one in it.)

My injury was a blessing in disguise. It was a low point, but a high point at the same time. It motivated me to come back strong. I fell back in love with the game. At the beginning, I had no idea this kind of season was attainable. It was more like, “It’d just be nice to be back out playing again.”