MIAMI — Brooks Koepka lastly bought residence to West Palm Seaside at 12:30 a.m. It was April 10, 2023. And thank goodness, as a result of that meant it wasn’t April 9, the date Koepka blew the lead at The Masters. No less than, that is what you would possibly guess Koepka was considering.
However Koepka wasn’t performed with April 9. He wasn’t performed with The Masters. Somewhat than head to mattress, the golfer went to the porch together with his pal Dan Gambill. They stayed up all evening. Not drowning their sorrows. It was truly the entire reverse.
Koepka and Gambill labored by each single shot from Koepka’s remaining spherical at Augusta. No tablets or telephones had been crucial. They only labored from Koepka’s reminiscence — his psychological archive of the spherical. It will need to have been brutally painful to recount his three-over-par spherical after beginning the day with a two-shot lead. It will need to have been painful to determine how Jon Rahm completed atop the leaderboard by 4 strokes.
However Koepka is not one to shrink back from discomfort. He ripped off the band-aid. And if he hadn’t, he doubtless would not have received the PGA Championship one month later, his first victory in a serious since 2019. It was a crucial “constructing” second, he stated.
“You need to be actually truthful with it and break it down into the best factors and actually assess it,” he advised FOX Sports activities on the LIV Golf Miami event final week. “I feel that is most likely considered one of my higher qualities. I can actually assess it and determine it out. We realized why the result went that means.”
Out on that porch, Koepka stated he recounted the next for every shot: 1) the plan and thought course of, 2) the place it missed, 3) what the shot felt like and 4) whether or not the execution was there.
That took greater than six hours.
It is typical for Koepka, who’s at the moment tenth within the LIV particular person standings this season, to do that after a loss. It is part of his course of. What was atypical was the urgency with which he approached the breakdown. It needed to occur that morning.
“You do not ever mirror in your wins,” he stated. “I mirror extra on the losses, attempting to determine why. Why sure occasions occurred. Why I hit it right here. Why was the execution incorrect? What was the thought course of? What went awry? So we simply narrowed it down and we figured it out.”
When the solar rose at about 7 a.m., Koepka went to mattress with a revelation about his sport.
You are most likely interested in what he realized.
Properly, he is not telling.
“I will not inform anyone,” he stated with a smirk. “I do not even know if my spouse is aware of.”
In the case of self-critique, the method is simply as necessary as the result for Koepka. Notably relating to profitable main championships.
“I feel the majors, lots of it is extra psychological than something. You have to determine why. You have a look at all of the second locations that I’ve had. These are those the place you mirror extra,” he stated.
Koepka tries to work out of hassle on the seventeenth gap through the remaining spherical of the 2023 Masters, the final of his six bogeys that day. (Picture by Andrew Redington/Getty Photos)
Koepka stated he has 4 second-place finishes in majors, however he is truly had solely three. Possibly the act of drawing them out on this means makes the quantity really feel bigger. Nevertheless it’s the lifetime of an athlete: learning the dangerous performances to provide means for enchancment. And if we realized something from his look on Netflix’s “Full Swing,” Koepka appears to toil as a lot as any golfer.
“Clearly, there have been errors, so you bought to just remember to by no means make that mistake once more. I am OK with making a brand new mistake, yeah? After which correcting it,” he stated. “Then you definately go, like, ‘That is life,’ proper? You are gonna make errors, however simply do not make the identical mistake once more.”
Possibly he will not inform us this explicit revelation. However when he first revealed the details about this all-nighter to YouTuber Rick Shiels, there have been extra slivers of the key round his 2023 Masters efficiency.
“I bought so obsessed and targeted on — I needed it so dangerous that that was the issue,” Koepka stated. “All you have to do is end 18 extra holes. I bought to this point forward. And whenever you get to this point forward, you lose what is going on on. It simply grew to become a catastrophe and a snowball impact, and also you’re simply happening and down.”
Then he added: “It should assist me years down the street now.”
It wasn’t a golden bullet.
These do not exist in golf, a sport that Koepka repeatedly advised me is about “lacking within the appropriate spot that you just’re attempting to overlook it.” It is nearly a double unfavourable, and it is sufficient to make your membership head spin.
Final yr, he was forty fifth in The Masters and did not have a top-20 end in any of the majors — that are sometimes Koepka’s specialty. Nevertheless it’s not like he hasn’t discovered success elsewhere. Koepka received two LIV tournaments final season. This yr, he does not have a person win after 5 tournaments, however he went to a playoff with Rahm in Singapore. And over his LIV Golf profession, Koepka has a third-place end in 2023 and a fifth-place end in 2024 within the particular person championship standings. At tenth proper now, he is inside placing distance of the highest of the leaderboard.
Brooks Koepka’s greatest moments at LIV Golf Singapore
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He had a forgettable outing at LIV Miami final weekend, when he completed tied for 18th at four-over par. With gusty winds and quick greens at Trump Nationwide Doral, Koepka was regular (taking pictures 73, 74 and 73 in his three rounds), however he did not have any actually particular days to vault himself into competition.
It was good for Masters prep, with all of Augusta Nationwide’s bodily and psychological challenges. Nevertheless it’s arduous to say if it will be indicative of the place his sport stands heading into Masters week, significantly for Koepka, who is understood to rise to the event when main season kicks off.
“I am sometimes a gradual starter. It takes me just a few occasions simply to sort of get comfy and determine the place my sport’s at,” he stated. “After which from there, simply sort of have somewhat little bit of a regroup. … Form of occurring after Singapore, simply to be sure that, OK, that is what we bought to do. Get some stats again. Have a look at some issues and determine, effectively, why is that this this fashion? After which actually assault that.
“And then you definately spend the final two weeks actually honing in on it and ensuring that any little cracks are buttoned up. You are feeling such as you’ve bought a superb sense of really feel, contact — whether or not it’s across the greens. I feel that is large for Augusta.”
He appears to know just a few different issues about Augusta which can be large — even when he will not inform us. However nobody is hoping greater than Koepka that these secrets and techniques will lead him again to the highest of the leaderboard at The Masters on Sunday.
Previous to becoming a member of FOX Sports activities as an NFL reporter and columnist, Henry McKenna spent seven years masking the Patriots for USA TODAY Sports activities Media Group and Boston Globe Media. Observe him on Twitter at @henrycmckenna.
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