The latest, strangest chapter in the Brooks Koepka-Brandel Chamblee pseudo-feud came Saturday. On his podcast, Chamblee made the case that only two players — Dustin Johnson and Rory McIlroy — are currently capable of challenging Tiger Woods as the best player in the world. Koepka, aware that he had been left off that list, responded to GOLF.com’s story with a notable tweet of his own.
And so it was that in a bizarre, extremely Internet-age story, one of the world’s top golfers tweeted out a photoshopped clown-nose image of one of golf’s top TV personalities, setting the Twitter world ablaze.
On Monday in New York, Brooks Koepka explained the story behind the exchange to GOLF.com.
“My coach sent me the tweet, he sent it it me and said, ‘I think you should see it,’ so I saw it and I responded.”
Koepka said that Harmon and others in his circle often pass on bulletin-board material.
“Yeah, I mean everybody on my team, everybody around me and close to me knows what’s going to get me fired up or what makes me pay attention a little more,” he said. “You tell me I can’t do something and I can’t wait to prove you wrong.”
As for who Photoshopped the clown photo itself? That wasn’t the handiwork of Koepka himself.
“I’ve got a group text with a bunch of buddies, there’s about 12 of them. I don’t know who sent it, one of ‘em sent it, I thought it was pretty funny,” he said.
“I sent them the whatever, the tweet, and that was the first one they sent, and I just went with it, man — a picture’s worth a thousand words.”
RT @dylan_dethier: please, nobody tell Brooks Koepka https://t.co/bWkeoOlCXo pic.twitter.com/DJ7CYbZO8h
— Brooks Koepka (@BKoepka) May 4, 2019
Koepka also addressed the question initially answered by Chamblee, but had a different take: When he’s on top of his game, he thinks he’s the best player in the world.
“Yeah, I mean anybody — everybody should believe that. I mean it’s tough, there’s a lot of shuffling going on right now to be the best player in the world, but when you’re on your A game any one of these top five, ten guys in the world could be the best at any given time.
“You can see it now with the way the majors are set up: You get hot, you could roll off all four of ’em in a very short period of time.”
As for Chamblee himself? Koepka hasn’t forgotten any of a laundry list of perceived slights. During the Masters, Chamblee ripped Koepka for his recent weight loss by suggesting that the 29-year-old lost the weight for vanity reasons. It has been rumored that Koepka lost the weight ahead of an appearance in ESPN‘s The Body Issue later this year.
“He’s done it a lot, he’s always got an opinion on something,” Koepka said. “And I don’t really respond too much. I know he said a bunch of things at Augusta and I never responded, that’s not really my style.
“But there comes a point where you just don’t care, and like I said, a picture’s worth more than a thousand words.”
