Life's A Beach - Brooks Koepka

Four Majors in the trophy cabinet. Over $30 million in the bank. Comfortable in his own skin... Brooks Koepka has been fasttracked to superstardom

- Brian Wacker

Over the last few seasons. no one has been better in the game's biggest moments than Brooks Koepka. The back-to-back US
Open victories (and almost a third) and two straight US PGA Championships helped the American become the No.1 player in the world. But, more than that, he has become the game's most intimidating presence when the lights are at their brightest.

He's one of the best I've ever seen at managing chaos in Major Championships; says his coach Claude Harmon III (in his last 10 Majors, Koepka has won four of them). He is the best at managing the chaos since Tiger.'

While comparing anyone to Woods is a fool's errand, when it comes to Koepka there are similarities that ring true. including the athleticism that he brings to his trade and, more importantly, his mental toughness, something that is so often the separator between the very good and the all-time greats.

“The game slows down for the greats,” Harmon continues. “They figure out how things work. He’s been trying to do what golfers and tennis players have been trying to do since the beginning of time and that’s peak four times a year. And he has figured it out.”

It’s not just those employed by Koepka who have noticed, either. “They are more similar than anybody is talking about,” says sport psychologist Gio Valiante of Koepka and Woods. “It goes very deep. It even shows up in their patterns of speech and use of language, their pauses, their beliefs. In a psychological sense, if not performance, he’s the most like Tiger Woods of any player we’ve ever seen.”