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ORLANDO — There weren’t many witnesses to the single most impressive act of courage seen in years at the Arnold Palmer Invitational on Saturday. It happened outside the scoring office when K.H. Lee — bringing a new definition to the concept of risk/reward — asked his playing partner, Brooks Koepka, to pose for selfies with him and his wife after Koepka had just signed for an 81, the highest score of his PGA Tour career.
There are more than a few Tour players who would have dismissed the young South Korean with the kind of gesture that is understood in any language, but instead Koepka cheerfully obliged the player who had just clipped him by nine strokes.
The 81 at Bay Hill eclipsed Koepka’s previous worst, an 80 in the 2013 Open Championship at Muirfield. But that was back in the infancy of his career, long before back-to-back U.S. Opens and back-to-back PGA Championships and a healthy stint as the world’s No. 1-ranked golfer. Not that he knew he was skidding to a personal worst in the blustery conditions. “No, I mean I didn’t play very good,” he said with a shrug. “It was tough. You’d have taken 2 over today.”
Arnold Palmer Invitational: Leaderboard
As it turned out, Koepka was 2 over after two holes, and added six more bogeys and a double-bogey against a lone birdie. It was just his ninth competitive round in 141 days since withdrawing from his title defense at the CJ Cup in South Korea last October after aggravating a knee injury. He returned to the Tour three weeks ago at the Genesis Open, where he finished T-43, then missed the cut at the Honda Classic after a pair of 74s last week. Playing the API was a last minute decision as he tries to rediscover some form.
“It’s close, it’s not far away,” he had said Thursday after an opening round of 72. The statistics accumulated since in his 73-81 offer little to back up Koepka’s optimism. He has found just 18 of the 42 fairways he has aimed at, and only half of the 54 greens. His 89 putts through three rounds indicate a lack of confidence on the greens too.
But the world No. 3 knows that statistics don’t always offer an accurate gauge of progress when competing in arduous conditions. “Part of the problem is we’ve played in so much wind. It’s really difficult to…”
He paused.
“…not trust it, but…”
Another pause.
“…I guess trust it. That is the right word,” he decided. “When it’s blowing 25 it’s hard. If there’s no wind you can see the ball flight, you can see what it’s doing. When it’s so gusty it’s difficult.”
Two holes stuck in Koepka’s craw during the third round. One was the 15th, a 465-yard sharp dogleg right. “You can’t hold the fairway,” he said with a vague hint of exasperation. “It’s downwind. I mean, you can’t hold it if there’s no wind with the rough, and then the pin is up in the front left. So I thought that was a little weird.” That hole yielded a rare back-nine par.
Not so the par-3 17th, which Koepka could only shake his head at the difficulty of. He measured it at 218 yards but said it was playing closer to 260. He made bogey there and eventually settled at 10-over-par, tied 64th among the 67 men playing the weekend. The indignity of not breaking 80 was compounded by another realization familiar to recreational golfers: his caddie, Ricky Elliott, lost the headcover of his Scotty Cameron putter along the way.
Sunday will be little more than an opportunity to find a shred of competitive confidence before he gets to the Players Championship next week. Koepka doesn’t have an overly encouraging record at TPC Sawgrass — zero top-10 finishes in five starts — but he dismissed any suggestion that he should be concerned about trying to find a pre-Masters spark on a succession of daunting venues. “I’m a big boy,” he said. “I can handle it.”
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