2023 Masters: Is Major Brooks Koepka back? Sure looked like it Thursday at Augusta National
AUGUSTA, Ga. – The recovery timeline was about 18 months.
That’s how long Brooks Koepka’s doctors told him it’d take for his surgically repaired knee to fully function again.
That prognosis was unacceptable, of course, and so with three weeks until the 2021 Masters, Koepka pushed himself to the breaking point, chomping down on a toilet in agony as they bent his knee, tears streaming down his face. Defying his doctors’ orders, he labored up and down the hills of Augusta National, looking for the path of least resistance. He winced in anticipation of any downhill lies that would put his dislocated kneecap in front of his heel and send a searing jolt of pain through his sculpted body.
Though a month later he somehow played his way into the final group of the PGA Championship, Koepka didn’t recognize the hidden toll. Shying away from pain, he didn’t fully load, couldn’t explode off his right side and hung back at impact, creating a two-way miss. Once the bad habits were ingrained, he was cooked. Last year was one of his worst as a pro, finishing no better than 55th in the major championships that have come to define his career.
Full-field scores from the 87th Masters Tournament
“The biggest battle was getting back out there fit,” said caddie Ricky Elliott. “He was trying to incorporate playing golf because of the competitive side of him.
“Obviously, it was doing his head in. He’d been to the top, and he was trying to push it a little bit, trying to push it in the gym and work out a way to get there again.”
Netflix cameras just so happened to be documenting Koepka’s misery and decline, including a humanizing scene at home when he wondered aloud how, in his current shape, he could possibly hang with new world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler. Missing was the jock swagger that had accompanied his ascent. He appeared fragile and vulnerable, his shock move to LIV Golf last summer portrayed mostly as a cash-grab for a broken athlete who had contemplated his competitive mortality.
“Any time with something like that, you don’t see everything,” Koepka said Thursday. “It’s all injury-based. You feel like you’re never going to be healthy. I wish I had celebrated the little milestones along the way instead of thinking I could just power through it.
“But once you feel good, everything changes.”
Feeling “good” is still relative for Koepka, 32. Once needing 15 minutes just to get going in the morning, he now says that he wakes up pain free. He has no physical limitations. He doesn’t need cortisone shots. Before and after rounds he works with his trainer to maintain his range of motion. Three times a night, he’ll put a cold wrap around his knee to reduce the swelling. After a few surgeries he joked that his “knee modeling days are over,” but it looks about as good as it can.
“It’s a new normal,” he said, “but it’s definitely pretty close to what it was.”
The doctors’ initial timeline put Koepka on track to feel close to 100% toward the end of 2022, and right on schedule, last November, he won the LIV event in Saudi Arabia. Afterward, he tearfully admitted that he had faced doubts whether his career was over.
“It’s the hardest I’ve ever worked, just trying to get back,” he said, “because I felt like I was on the cusp of it, and it was nice to know that I was able to get through that.”
Though Koepka did little to inspire confidence for the first three months of the new year, somehow, it all felt strangely familiar. During his remarkable career he’s been a unicorn, able to look listless for long stretches during the regular season, only to turn up at the legacy-defining events and summon his best. And so when he missed an Asian Tour cut and finished outside the top 25 in a pair of LIV starts this spring, he didn’t question his progress.
“The game was there,” Elliott said. “He just needed a couple of results.”
Sure enough, with the year’s first major fast approaching, his internal timer went off, just as it had in his prime: Koepka sprinted out front last week at the LIV event in Orlando and became the first two-time winner on the rival circuit. It was the validation that he’d been seeking – that he was healthy, that his swing was primed, that he was ready.
Two years after he rushed back from injury for the Masters – a decision that ultimately altered the trajectory of his career – Koepka on Thursday looked very much like the punisher who used to put major fields in a chokehold. In the opening round he dialed in his distance control. Made smart decisions. Carded eight birdies and missed a handful of other looks inside 10 feet.
“That was good, eh?” Elliott said. “He’s fit again. He striped it all day. He’s hitting it the way he used to.”
It added up to a 7-under 65 that gave him a share of the first-round lead, along with Jon Rahm and Viktor Hovland. Both are top-10 players in the world, while Koepka – because of his injuries, because of his move to LIV, because of his major failures last year – has dropped all the way to 118th.
“I think he’s got to prove to everybody again that he’s still one to contend with,” Elliott said. “That’s why he’s out here.”
Then consider Masters Thursday a warning.
Koepka is healthy, finally, and he’s ready for more.