Brooks Koepka’s game is not where he wants it. Since his three-win campaign last season, the 30-year-old just hasn’t been himself. He’s recorded just one top 10 during this abbreviated season — a solo seventh at the RBC Heritage — and he’s missed as many cuts (three) this year as he did during the previous two seasons combined.
Lots of these struggles can be directly linked to a nagging knee injury that has plagued him for the past 16 months. Koepka had a procedure done on the knee shortly after last year’s Tour Championship and revealed that he’d been playing through pain for the better part of the year. He reinjured the same knee in Korea last October and was sidelined until 2020. But even when he returned in January, he admitted he the knee still wasn’t fully healthy.
Brooks Koepka fires an ‘annoying’ blast at an analyst after criticism
“It was a lot worse than we let on,” Koepka said at the time. “I’m nowhere near 100%; I don’t know if my knee will ever be 100%. It’s one of those things where I’m just trying every day.”
His game has not come close to returning to previous form since those remarks, and in April, he once again reiterated that his knee still isn’t quite right.
“It still doesn’t feel perfect,” Koepka said. “You can still tell something is not 100%.”
Even with his top-10 finish a few weeks ago, Koepka still doesn’t look quite right. The imposing figure who dominated the sport for two years is nowhere to be found. To add even more concern, he was even seen wincing at times during his third round at the Memorial Tournament.
After the round, he admitted that he’d had an MRI on the knee earlier in the week. The results didn’t show any further damage, but the fact that he felt it needed to be checked out shows just how far from healthy he is.
“Just wanted to check on it, see where it’s at,” Koepka said. “Nothing is improved; it’s still the same.”
Kopeka sits at four over for the tournament and will have yet another early tee time come Sunday morning.