AUGUSTA, Ga. — If this Masters is really a heavyweight fight between golf’s feuding families, and if Brooks Koepka represents the Great White Shark’s Great White Hope, then the PGA Tour had better get ready to duck.
The Shark, Greg Norman, has a vision of every LIV player in the field storming the 18th green to celebrate a LIV triumph at the one venue that the sport’s traditionalists can’t allow to fall. And if any of the other 17 LIV-and-let-LIV boys who finished Round 1 (Kevin Na withdrew) sat atop the leaderboard, including the six former Masters champs, that vision would belong to fantasy.
The lack of true competition on the Saudi circuit would likely be the undoing of everyone else.
But not Brooks Koepka, an in-your-face terminator who doesn’t care if you approve of his swaggering approach. He was Angel Reese before Angel Reese, and he’d still be trash-talking Bryson DeChambeau if he felt it served his long-term goals.
Koepka birdied three of the final four holes Thursday to shoot 7-under 65 and share the Masters lead with Viktor Hovland and Jon Rahm, looking like the player who won four major championships in a two-year span. He was ranked No. 1 in the world for 47 weeks before injuries diminished him, and inspired him to grab a cool $100 million from Norman and the Saudis in case his body never recovered.
Well guess what? Koepka’s body has recovered from major knee surgery and a half dozen other injuries. “I told somebody here on the back nine, ‘Beware of the healthy BK,’ ” Koepka’s father Bob told The Post and The Palm Beach Post.
Yes indeed, let the buyer of PGA Tour stock beware of the golfer now ranked 118th in the world — the tax on that $100 million deal — and the winner of last week’s LIV event at a course in Winter Garden, Fla., Crooked Cat, that has plenty of weekend tee times available online.
Koepka will be too busy to book one. He’ll be trying to win the green jacket that he lost to Tiger Woods in 2019, eight months after he held off a charging Woods to win the PGA Championship.
“How many people have held off Tiger?” Bob Koepka asked near the Augusta National clubhouse. “Those are all things that [Brooks] has got in his head. … You always look back on your experiences, and he’s got those to look back on, and he’s performed when he’s had to. He had Tiger and Adam Scott both chasing him down there at Bellerive and he hit probably the best 4-iron of his life on that par-3 [at the 16th].”
The father thought his son’s LIV victory Sunday helped his confidence. “I’m back,” Koepka told Norman after winning at Crooked Cat.
Back from the brink of oblivion.
In the Netflix series “Full Swing,” Koepka came across as a shaken (if not broken) man, questioning this and questioning that about his health, his game, his everything.
“He was wounded,” his father said, “and he was trying to play through it. Golf’s hard enough when you’re healthy. He created some bad habits trying to protect certain parts that were injured, and he was frustrated with it.”
When he was done taking out his frustrations on Augusta National, Koepka called his knee injury “pretty gruesome,” spoke of needing 15 minutes to get out of bed in the morning, and recalled biting down on a towel and crying while his physical therapist was trying to bend that knee. “I figure if I can go through that,” Koepka said, “I can go through anything.”
He is 32 years old, and has already conceded he will need a knee replacement.
“It’s probably the closest I can be to Tiger without his leg,” Koepka said of Woods, who nearly lost his right leg after his horrific car crash. “I’m not saying it’s anywhere near his, but I understand how painful it is and how just mentally grueling it is.”
In last year’s four majors, Koepka missed two cuts and twice finished in 55th place, which he attributes to injuries. Now he feels good about walking straight down the 10th hole, rather than walking down the sides to protect his knee. He feels good about being able to squat and read a putt without confronting the pain.
“And once you feel good,” Koepka said, “everything changes.”
A healthy BK is a frightening proposition for everyone else, especially the PGA Tour side of the field. Koepka said that his demeanor changes when he arrives at a major, and that family and friends see it as soon as his plane touches down. He gets very quiet, and he gets very driven.
Unlike most of his LIV peers at the Masters, Koepka isn’t wearing his LIV team logo on his shirt and cap. He’s going with the Nike swoosh, and nothing else. Koepka sees golf as the ultimate individual battle — his villainous self against the world.
But make no mistake: If he wins his fifth major title, it will be a monumental triumph for all things LIV. And given Koepka’s track record in the ring, the PGA Tour had better prepare to hit the canvas.