It would be foolish to doubt Brooks Koepka, man of five majors, who has repeatedly pocketed slights and used them to fuel some of his greatest achievements on the golf course.
But it would also be foolish to look at him right now, in this current moment as the world-beater he once was. There is something amiss. To ignore that would be silly. So what’s puzzling Koepka as he plays his third PGA Tour event since detaching himself from LIV Golf? Broadcasters talked about it during the broadcast of his season debut. It’s that putter. The old one.
Koepka’s performance in his first tournament back (at Torrey Pines) showed a man with a decent driver and a very solid irons game. Around the greens, Koepka was adept at getting up, but not so much at getting down. The Scotty Cameron blade-type putter he has used throughout his career was so balky in San Diego that he finished dead last in Strokes Gained: Putting of all the gents who made the cut. For context, he finished 12 strokes behind runner-up Ryo Hisatsune, and 11 shots behind him with just the putter.
While the golf world was probably inclined to cut him some slack, Koepka wasn’t ready to move forward with the status quo. He showed up in Phoenix a week later rocking something completely different — a mallet-styled flat-stick — and openly admitted in his press conference that something had to change. “I’ve been putting pretty poorly for the good side of two years,” Koepka said. “I don’t know what’s going on but I’ve got to figure it out.”
He wasn’t lying. Koepka at his best was a top-5 putter in the world. During his major-winning peak, he was consistently above the Tour average, a healthy baseline that left room for him to win whenever the putter got extra hot for a week.
His immediate results with the mallet were not much better. Koepka missed the cut in Phoenix where, once again, his Strokes Gained results were well below that week’s average. But as he stated Wednesday, maybe we shouldn’t have expected quick results. Koepka estimated he hit about “300 putts” with that mallet — a TaylorMade Spider TourX — before putting it in the bag.
“But having two weeks of being able to get work done and make some adjustments, it should be a lot better,” he said Wednesday morning in Florida. Getting a new putter going, in that sense, sounds a bit like wearing in a new pair of shoes. The more time you have to break them in, the better they feel, but at first there’s a learning curve.
“I didn’t know where exactly I was hitting it,” he said, “and obviously when you change putters, speed becomes another thing. I felt like the speed was slightly off.
“Now I understand exactly where to hit it and where it’s going. I feel like my speed control has gotten better, and just with a few changes, just tidying those things up.”
As we’ve learned in his few tournaments back, Koepka hasn’t wasted words in his explanations. As ever, he’d like his game to do most of the talking. We’ll be especially curious to hear what his putter has to say. We’ll have at least two more rounds to listen this week. Maybe even four.
This week he’ll play near his home in southern Florida. Barring a top-two finish, Koepka won’t qualify for next week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational, which means he’ll have a week off before a loaded schedule resumes. He is currently listed in the field for the Players Championship, the Valspar Championship and the Houston Open.
Plenty of time to warm up his putter before major championship season begins.
