ROCHESTER, NEW YORK | It had been nearly an hour since Brooks Koepka had finished off his victory in the PGA Championship at Oak Hill, and he was still on the 18th green, posing for photos with the Wanamaker Trophy and various groups and individuals who were getting their own snapshots of the historic moment.
Koepka smiled the smile of a contented man while photo after photo was snapped, resting a forearm on the 27-pound silver trophy at one point and flashing five fingers another time.
Winning one major championship puts a golfer in select company.
Winning five majors puts a player in elite company.
Consider whom Koepka joined with five majors: Seve Ballesteros, Peter Thomson, Byron Nelson, John Henry Taylor and James Braid. Three of the five – Thomson, Taylor and Braid – combined to win the Claret Jug 15 times, with Taylor and Braid collecting theirs more than a century ago.
Only 14 players have won more than five major championships, and now that his right knee is healthy again and Koepka is in full prowl mode, the question is how many majors he might win.
Koepka set the bar at 15 in a magazine interview two years ago, before a serious right knee injury threatened his career.
It sounded preposterous. Only Jack Nicklaus (18) and Tiger Woods (15) have reached that rarest of airs.
“I think he will want to win all four majors a couple of times. Look at how many times he’s already been second (four, including at this year’s Masters) and just missed out? And he’s only 33,” said Pete Cowen, Koepka’s short-game coach and one of golf’s wise men.
“He will win a lot more. I certainly think he will go another four, and he would like the Grand Slam.”
Koepka once described his approach to playing major championships as “It’s grind it out, suck it up and move on. It’s simpler than guys think.”
Consider that Ben Hogan (nine) and Phil Mickelson (six) won all of their major championships after their 33rd birthdays, and Koepka sees himself entering the prime of his career.
When Koepka won the 2019 PGA Championship at Bethpage Black, Graeme McDowell said this about him: “You can’t teach anyone to think the way Brooks Koepka does.”
Koepka once described his approach to playing major championships as “It’s grind it out, suck it up and move on. It’s simpler than guys think.”
Cowen, who has been around the game for decades and can see beyond the surface, has worked with many of the all-time greats and, having been a good player himself, he understands what the game asks of its best players.
He’s the architect behind Koepka’s underrated short game, and he’s also part of a team that has helped mold the modern major master. Cowen keeps a signed flag in his office in the U.K. from Koepka’s 2017 U.S. Open victory at Erin Hills, the only flag he has from Koepka.
“I sat him down on Tuesday (at Erin Hills). I’d watched him play all four rounds at the (previous week’s) St. Jude Classic. I said, ‘With that attitude you had there, you’ll win nothing. The talent is there, but your attitude is poor,’” Cowen said Sunday evening during Koepka’s trophy-presentation ceremony.
“I said, ‘Show me the attitude of a champion.’ On the flag, it says, ‘Thanks for the bollicking. I couldn’t have done it without you.’”
Perhaps that’s Cowen’s genius. He gave Henrik Stenson a similar lecture before the 2016 Open Championship at Royal Troon after Stenson withdrew from the U.S. Open a month earlier because, according to Cowen, of a rain delay.
The message to Koepka and Stenson was the same.
“What do you want to be remembered by? (Koepka’s) a guy that used all his talent and got the best out of his talent,” Cowen said. “I’ve seen far too many players with unbelievable talent waste it because of poor attitude.”
Koepka has made no secret of how his failure to close out the Masters on Sunday last month gnawed at him. He sat up most of that Sunday night rehashing what happened with a close friend, facing his own fire, not turning away from it.
Though Koepka hasn’t offered the specifics of his self-discovery, he has owned both Sundays – the one during which he failed in Augusta and the one when he held off Viktor Hovland at unforgiving Oak Hill.
“I’ve always learned more from the four times I finished second than, I guess, the five times I’ve won now. I think failure is how you learn. You get better from it. You realize what mistakes you’ve made,” Koepka said.
“Each time, I’ve kind of made an adjustment. It’s more mentality than it is anything. It’s not really golf swing or anything like that. You’re going to play how you play, but mentally you can kind of figure things out, and I’m always trying to get better. Just trying to find that different little edge just to poke and try inside my head.”
If there is a mystery to Koepka’s career, it’s why he hasn’t been as good in regular tournaments as he has been in majors. Five of his nine PGA Tour wins are major championships, and though he has two individual titles in LIV Golf, no one is suggesting they are on the level of the majors.
The simple answer is that the majors mean more to Koepka, who has used them to put himself in second place in the U.S. Ryder Cup points race, almost assuring he will be on the American team in Rome this fall.
Had Koepka known a year ago he would be as physically fit as he is, might he have declined LIV Golf’s mega-millions offer? He has hinted at it, but the reality is Koepka was facing an uncertain future.
Plenty of players have said they will be perfectly content with a good career that doesn’t include any major-championship victories. Koepka isn’t wired that way.
That’s why he considered walking away from competitive golf if his right knee and leg didn’t respond to surgery and rehabilitation the way they ultimately did.
Koepka plays majors with purpose and discipline, traits at least as valuable as his immense physical strength.
“He likes it tough,” Cowen said. “He does make dumb mistakes playing normal tournaments. He very rarely makes dumb mistakes playing majors.”
Had Koepka known a year ago he would be as physically fit as he is, might he have declined LIV Golf’s mega-millions offer? He has hinted at it, but the reality is Koepka was facing an uncertain future.
“It was good for him,” Cowen said. “We thought at the time his injuries were going to be, not corrected. Fourteen tournaments would be fine.”
Asked whether Koepka would entertain a return to the PGA Tour if there is a path back in the future, Cowen said: “He wants to play against the best players. If the best players are on the PGA Tour…”
In the meantime, the U.S. Open and the Open Championship await this summer.
Two more majors.
Two more chances.