Throughout his career, Brooks Koepka has thrived in big-time moments. As the winner of five major championships, all since 2017, he’s easily been the most prolific player in golf’s biggest events over the past decade.
He’s also performed well in his four Ryder Cup appearances. In addition to sporting a winning record of 7-6-2, he has not lost a singles match, going 2-0-2 despite playing in three U.S. losing efforts.
That’s all to say, he’d be unlikely to shy away from hitting the opening tee shot in the hostile environment of an away Ryder Cup.
But, as Tony Finau recently revealed in a YouTube video with content creator Grant Horvat and reposted by the popular Instagram account @ziregolf, Koepka gave up that honor once.
Finau, who is making his third Presidents Cup appearance this week for Team USA, is asked to recall his favorite Ryder Cup memory, which ended up revolving around the decision for him to hit the opening tee shot of the 2018 matches in France.
“[Captain] Jim Furyk asked me when I wanted to go and me and Brooks were going to be paired together and we’re like, ‘Yeah, we’d like to go first,'” Finau said. “Brooks comes to me and is like ‘You wanna hit the first tee shot?'”
Finau, then 29, playing in his first Ryder Cup as a captain’s pick, didn’t want to steal the honor from his playing partner.
“No, I’ll give that honor to you,” Finau said.
But Koepka insisted.
“No, let me rephrase that,” was Koepka’s response. “You’re gonna hit the first tee shot.”
That meant Finau would not only have the honor when he and Koepka teed off in their match, but as it was the first match of the opening day, he’d be leading off the entire event.
The 2018 Ryder Cup was also the one Tiger Woods was most recently a part of, having also earned a captain’s pick and later breaking a five-year winless drought at the Tour Championship just a week prior.
Woods had some tough love for Finau when he learned at a team meeting that night the rookie would be hitting the opening tee shot of the entire match.
“Tiger looks at me, and he’s like, ‘Don’t F*** it up, kid,'” Finau remembered. “That’s all he said.”
The next day it was time, and the atmosphere, Finau said, was like nothing he had ever experienced before.
“I get to the first tee, 10,000 people around. [Michael Jordan] is there. Michael Phelps. These guys are all watching,” he said. “There’s so much energy and then all of the sudden, as soon as I tee the ball up, it was like you could hear a pin drop.”
And luckily for him, Woods, and the rest of their team, Finau rose to the occasion.
“I end up stripping it,” Finau said proudly. “I had so much adrenaline. It was 45 degrees at 7:30 in the morning and I end up hitting this 3-iron like 290. It was smoked right down the middle. Almost went in the water, though, at the 300-yard mark. But I was just so hyped.”
Finau and Koepka won their opening four-ball match against Justin Rose and Jon Rahm and the U.S. took the morning session 3-1. But the Europeans swept the afternoon session and ended up recapturing the Cup in a 17.5-10.5 romp of the Americans.
Koepka had the worst Ryder Cup performance of his career, going 1-2-1 while Finau was one of the few bright spots for the Americans going 2-1-0 in his first matches. But Finau holds that memory of an example of he and Koepka’s close bond.
“Brooks will always be a homie for that,” Finau said. “He’ll always be in my good graces. Not only for that, but like our wives are good friends, like he’s just a homie for that.”
