Koepka Wins P.G.A. Championship, Vanquishing Demons and Boosting LIV
By the end of last year, he had a swelling hunch that his recovery was nearly done and that he could, finally, be relevant again. Around January, he has said, he was certain of it.
“He is back to being healthy,” said Cameron Smith, who won the British Open last summer and then joined LIV later in the year. “I think that brings a little bit of internal confidence as well being out there and just being able to do your stuff.”
It did not look that way as recently as Thursday, when the prospect that Koepka would outlast a swarm of stars seemed closer to impossible than even improbable. He had opened his tournament with a two-over-par 72 and, by his own account, was out of sorts and struggling to strike the ball as he wished. He could not remember, he said, the last time he had hit so poorly.
But he was not that far behind because the tournament, the first major played at Oak Hill since a sweeping effort to restore some of the daunting tests that characterize Donald J. Ross-designed courses, emerged as one of the most fearsome P.G.A. Championships in recent decades, often evoking the rigors of the 2008 competition at Oakland Hills in Michigan. Of the 156 players who competed this past week, only 11 finished below par — a departure from 2013, when the P.G.A. Championship was contested at Oak Hill and 21 players finished in the red.
Source: The New York Times
