PGA Tour
Brooks Koepka snapped clubs and sulked for '30 hours' before his turnaround Phoenix Open win
Christian Petersen
When Brooks Koepka won the Waste Management Phoenix Open two weeks ago, the victory snapped a winless drought that stretched back to July 2019 and the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational. It also brought to an end a long period of frustration for the four-time major champion.
How frustrated had Koepka become?
He says he snapped two sets of irons over his knee at home in his living room, first after missing the cut at the Mayakoba Golf Classic in Mexico in December and then again after another weekend off at the Farmers Insurance Open. In between, he also missed the cut at The American Express.
“I don’t really do that,” Koepka said Wednesday from the Genesis Invitational in Los Angeles. “So there was quite a bit of frustration, but at the same time you’ve just got to stick it out.
“I felt like my patience is always there, it’s just sometimes results take a little bit longer. You’re doing the whole process, you’re doing it exactly how you want it, but the results might not be there, and I think that sometimes you can get result-oriented and I think that’s kind of where I was.”
That wasn’t all.
Koepka, who was sidelined the first two months of the 2020-21 season with knee and hip injuries that also prevented him from playing in the U.S. Open at Winged Foot in September, added that after missing the cut at the Farmers, he didn’t come out of his room at the house he rented nearby for “about 30 hours.”
“I was so mad at myself,” Koepka said. “Didn’t want to talk to anybody. I was really agitated, really pissed off. Sometimes you need that. Sometimes you just need to not reset but really think about, ‘All right, hey, this is what I’ve got to do,’ and I did it.”
Not surprisingly, the win in Arizona and the patience he showed in rallying from five strokes back on the final day has him feeling better about his game heading into this week at Riviera, despite a T-43 there last year and missed cut in 2017 in his only two appearances.
“It’s pretty close,” he said. “I feel very confident. I like where I’m at. My game feels exactly where it’s been in the past.”
Which is probably a good thing for any other golf clubs laying around Koepka’s house.