2023 Masters: The knee injury that altered Brooks Koepka’s career now a distant memory

AUGUSTA, Ga. – The nadir of Brooks Koepka’s dispiriting decline may have come right here at Augusta National.

Last spring, Koepka missed the cut at the Masters for the second consecutive year. Having split with his coach Claude Harmon III, he was going at it alone with his swing. He was frustrated by the slow progress with his surgically rebuilt knee.

In the caddie parking lot, Koepka took out his frustration on his Mercedes SUV.

He tried to punch out the back window.

When it didn’t shatter, he wound up and swung again.

Still nothing.

“Apparently not strong enough,” he said with a smile.

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Koepka stewed the entire trip home, his hand and his pride hurting, but little did he know that the rest of the 2022 major season wouldn’t get much better. 

“Super annoying,” he said. “Just a lot of frustration.”

And that’s when the doubts began to surface. Not about whether he still had the talent to win more majors. But whether his broken body would heal enough to even give him a realistic chance to try.

“The only time I ever thought about not playing was if I couldn’t move the way I wanted to,” he said Friday. “If I wasn’t going to be able to move the way I wanted to, I didn’t want to play the game anymore.”

When Koepka dislocated his right kneecap and sustained more ligament damage in March 2021, doctors initially told him that it’d be about 18 months until he was fully recovered. He didn’t just play three weeks later at the Masters, but he teed it up again and again and again, even climbing into the final group of the PGA Championship. Despite playing on basically one leg, he gritted his way to top-8 finishes in the year’s final three majors.

With two years to reflect, yes, Koepka could have – and probably should have – just shut it down. Taken the necessary time to heal. But he has always prided himself on his major record, and on playing hurt, so he forged ahead and vowed not to miss any more time like he had with previous knee and hip injuries.

“I was just tired of it,” he said. “I felt like glass was always breaking. It’s not fun.” 

That stubbornness had consequences.

Poor habits began to form. Unable to load into his right side, he hung back and began to battle a two-way miss. His quality of life diminished; he often needed 15 minutes just to get going in the morning. Treatment sessions became a part of his daily routine. Pain reverberated through his body each time he crouched to read a putt.

“Every time I went down,” he said, “I was just angry with myself because I was just thinking, Man, how stupid is this?”

A year later, so much has changed.

As his doctors anticipated, Koepka’s mobility began to improve at the end of last year. His speed and stamina increased. He put in the work without the constant fear of pain. After reconnecting with Harmon, Koepka won the LIV event in Saudi Arabia last November, even without his best stuff, and they began to see even more promising signs this spring. He won again last week in Orlando, and now he’s breezed through the first two rounds of this Masters with rounds of 65-67 to open a three-shot lead before play was suspended.

“It was a clinic for 36 holes,” Gary Woodland said, and it all looked very familiar. “If he wasn’t winning, he was in the top 5 of every major there for a couple of years. He’s definitely back in that form right now.”

When asked how far removed he feels from his major-winning prime, Koepka said: “I don’t think far off at all. I’ve got a completely different knee, so the normal is a little bit different. But swing-wise, it still feels the same. I’m able to do everything I need to do. And the confidence is there. The confidence was lost just because of my knee, and that was it.”   

That injury altered the course of Koepka’s career. With his future in doubt, and staring at a nine-figure payday from the Saudis, the 32-year-old decided to bolt for LIV Golf. Had the circumstances been different – had he been healthy, had he been competitive, had he still been among the world’s best – would it have been a more difficult choice to leave?

“Honestly, yeah, probably, if I’m being completely honest,” he said. “I think it would have been. But I’m happy with the decision I made.”

In this fractured new world, Koepka will battle the best players in the world only four times a year at the majors – and that’s perfectly fine with him. Those are the only events he’s truly cared about, anyway.

“If you look at the history of Brooks, he’s always lived for these moments,” Woodland said. “He’s very similar to Tiger in that standpoint – that the other tournaments never seem to bring out the best in him, whereas the majors did, and it was no different here this week.”

Koepka’s failed punch-out? Now a distant memory.

He is back at Augusta – and primed to inflict more punishment on the rest of the Masters field.