Brooks Koepka moves into lead at PGA Championship

PITTSFORD, NY — Four years ago, less than a week before he won his second consecutive PGA Championship, Brooks Koepka let the world into his boastful spirit.

“One hundred and fifty-six in the field, so you think I’m going to beat at least 80,” he said on Bethpage in 2019. “You think about half of them won’t play well from there, so you’re still at about 35,” he added. “And then from 35 onwards, some of them will just come under pressure. You only have a few left, and you just have to beat those guys.”

Fight long enough, he reasoned, and good things will happen.

He returned to the mix last month at the Masters Tournament where he surrendered his lead to Jon Rahm on the final round. And now he’s in the mix this weekend at the PGA Championship at Oak Hill Country Club, where he fired a field-best four-under-par 66 on a rain-soaked Saturday that gave him a one-stroke lead over Corey Conners. and Viktor Hovland with one round to play. He had also scored a tournament-leading 66 on Friday, following a 72 on Thursday.

All of that stems from a man with a difficult medical history, a man who last year tried (and failed) to smash car windows at Augusta National Golf Club after a missed Masters cut, a man who played a round on Thursday that he said was the “was the worst I’ve had in a long time.” He tied for 38th that day, a day after stating that the try-and-beat-me algorithm he worked out in 2019 still worked just fine.

Maybe he was right after all.

Sunday, of course, has pitfalls. With its often tight and narrow fairways and a rough whose green hue makes it look more attractive than it really is, Oak Hill has been a diabolical test since the first tee shot on Thursday. After two rounds of play, only nine players were below par. After three, that number had shrunk to seven.

Conners had a lead that stretched to two strokes for much of Saturday, helped by a front nine that passed bogeyless and made the possibility of his first major championship win all the more real. Born in Ontario not far from Oak Hill, he has been a favorite of the galleries, boosted by an April win at the Texas Open and confident in his putting, a welcome status for a player with a reputation for expert ball strikes. But a double bogey on the 16th hole knocked him out of first place.

And Hovland once again lurked around the top of the standings all Saturday. He’s been there before: since the start of the British Open last year, he’s been in the top-10 at the end of every major tournament round. His afternoon quickly turned dark, with bogeys on two of his first five holes, before he was poised to take the lead on the 14th hole after three birdies. A sand wedge about 75 yards brought him just inside the edge of the green, but he missed a birdie putt and settled for par. He missed another birdie attempt at number 16.

Six pairs ahead, Rory McIlroy, Hovland’s playing partner in last year’s final round at St Andrews, rediscovered some of the form that eluded him at the Masters and beyond. (Neither Hovland nor McIlroy won that Open, which left Cameron Smith with the burgundy pitcher.) Often drenched, McIlroy shot a 69 for the second consecutive day, taking him to one under and continuing his ambition to win his first major since 2014 not completely out of reach.

“I probably hit a little bit better off the tee today than the first few days, but I think this tournament, and especially in these conditions and on this golf course, the non-physical parts of the game, I think, are much more . this week more important than the physical parts of the game,” McIlroy said on Saturday. “And I think I did that one well, and that’s the reason I’m in a good position.”

Koepka hasn’t gone as long as McIlroy without a big win, though he’s been more battered by injuries in recent years. He started to gain ground early on Saturday with birdies on the fourth and fifth holes. At number 5, christened Little Poison, his 179-yard tee shot landed cleanly on the green, setting up a birdie putt. Unlike many other great champions of the past, including McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler and Bryson DeChambeau, on Saturday he avoided bogey at number 6, a devastating par-4 that played closer to a 5.

A second shot at No. 13 landed in the rough, leaving Koepka 90 yards from the hole. His next shot put him on the green and set up a birdie putt from about 5.5 yards. However, that putt looked void at the 17th hole, when Koepka rolled one in from about 15 yards.

One of the central questions during the tournament at Oak Hill was whether Koepka would be much like the player who punished almost the entire field at Augusta. He then played in the LIV Golf League and had a mediocre performance in Australia, a third-place finish in Singapore and a sixth-place finish last weekend in Oklahoma.

Before that tournament near Tulsa, he’d reflected on how he enjoyed the rigors of the majors: “the discipline, the mental grind that comes with it, the focus.” In the hours following his letdown at Augusta, he said last week, he wasn’t sleeping, that boastful ghost suddenly started looking for answers. The answers took shape within a few days.

He said on Saturday that he had learned to “never think the way I thought going into the last round”.

“I won’t do it again for the rest of my career,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t start playing badly – ​​you can play well, you will play badly, but I’ll never have that mentality or that’s never going to be the reason.”

A win on Sunday would earn him his fifth major tournament championship, and his first since that heady week at Bethpage in 2019.

Others are not so well positioned. Rahm, the No. 1 player in the Official World Golf Ranking, shot two over on Saturday to bring his tournament score to six. Last year’s PGA Championship winner Justin Thomas and Phil Mickelson, who has won the event twice, were five over on Saturday, taking their scores to ten over.

“This golf course, as difficult as it is, it all starts with putting the ball in the fairway,” said Rahm. “It is not an easy task. It’s very, very difficult. If you can do that, then maybe you can give yourself some chances and that’s where it all starts. A little bit of trying to keep the club head dry and manage it, but again there’s an element – there’s only so much you can control – so a bit of luck.”

With the wet conditions expected to subside, players expected the tees to be moved back for Sunday’s final round. The PGA of America, noted three-time major winner Padraig Harrington, is very adept at setups.

“If they want us to go out and get a good score since we’re 68, they’ll set it up that way,” he said. “If they want, they can certainly put it on the back burner, but that doesn’t suit the leader. The leaders always want a tough challenge on Sunday so they can play safely and catch up with the chasers.

But the universe of pursuers is small. Again, the members chase Koepka.