PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — It’s not easy these days to get Brooks Koepka’s digits.
“I just changed my phone number,” Koepka said Tuesday at the Players Championship. “Basically [it’s] only my family and anybody golf related [who] has my number right now. It’s been kind of nice.”
Still, there’s little question at this week’s Players Championship about who — or, more accurately, what — does have Koepka’s number: the famed island-green 17th.
Despite a prolific career as perhaps the best big-game hunter of golf’s modern era, Koepka has endured an unusual stretch as perhaps the most tortured golfer in the recent history of the island green.
“The 17th hole,” he said, smiling, when asked about the biggest challenge at TPC Sawgrass. “I don’t know if there’s stats on it, but I guarantee there are. One year I made an 8 and a 7. Yeah, that wasn’t very good. But that 17th hole has gotten me over the years. I’ve played good rounds here; that’s just kind of the one bugaboo that always gets me.”
Bugaboo might be an undertstatment. According to the PGA Tour’s ShotLink accounting, Koepka has played the hole nearly a full stroke over par for his career, including nine water balls and a pair of 7s in just nine tries. (For better or worse, Koepka’s bad memories of the hole might be running together: He never recorded a 8.)
The 17th has a well-documented history as a nightmare factory, but the five-time major champ says he hasn't reached that stage of the proceedings just yet.
"No, I don't think about it," Koepka said. "It doesn't haunt me. I mean my friends, they give me a bunch of crap about it. Between 17 and 12 at Augusta, it seems to be the par-3s."
As Koepka pointed out Tuesday, at least one of the higher scores could be chalked up to bad luck on a seriously windy day in 2022.
"I think the last time we played here, I think I hit 5-iron on the hole," he said with a chuckle. "It was the year it was blowing like crazy. Somebody hit 6-iron, I think, and came up short, so I hit 5, then it went over. I mean, it's kind of tough to argue when it's blowing 35."
That said, bad conditions haven't stopped Koepka's pals from extracting their pound of flesh.
"Yeah, my friends bust my chops about it pretty good," he said. "But it's in the past. Nothing I can do about it. But I hit the green yesterday, so I was pretty pumped about that."
