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ORLANDO — There was plenty for Brooks Koepka to feel good about on Sunday at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, beyond the obvious 10-stroke improvement on his scorecard from a career-high round of 81 a day earlier. His Strokes Gained Tee to Green stats showed a gain of almost seven shots over the third round, his Strokes Gained Around the Green was nearly three strokes to the good, and his putter hit its target more often than in any other round at Bay Hill this week.
But ask the world No. 3 how he played in his final round 71 — marred by a double-bogey at the last — and his reply was characteristically direct and unvarnished: “Still sh**,” he said. “Still sh**. Putting better.”
When it was pointed out to Kopeka that scatalogical statements from the podium might be frowned upon by the PGA Tour, he shrugged.
“Well, fine me.”
In just his 10th competitive round since October — a left knee injury cost him almost four months — Koepka made five birdies, compared to six total in his previous 54 holes this week. But his day was bookended by double bogeys and left the four-time major winner feeling frustrated about his game as he heads to next week’s Players Championship. That will be the third of five straight weeks he will play in an effort to rediscover some form.
“I would never play more than three weeks in a row. But obviously sometimes things happen and the only way I see getting through this is playing,” he admitted. “That’s my way of trying to grind and work it out and figure it out.”
“You find that one feeling and sometimes that’s why I think it’s important to play or to get out there. You can stand on the range all day and do it, but when you get out there and start playing is when — I don’t want to say it was messing around today, but it was more of just trying to feel shots and feel different things, is this working, is this not.”
After three days of mediocre putting, Koepka says he found something with the flatstick that gives him cause for optimism. “The touch is back. I feel very confident with that,” he said. “But still close on the swing, sometimes it’s there and then sometimes it’s not … I’m pleased the way I’m putting it, short game’s good. I just need to figure out the long game.”
Koepka won the Waste Management Phoenix Open in February of 2015, but the five years since have delivered barren first quarters of the calendar. A T-2 at last year’s Honda Classic was a rare highlight in a welter of middling finishes and missed cuts. “I don’t know what it is about these first three months of the year but I struggle quite a bit,” he said.
His growing sense of frustration is increasingly evident and even left him searching literally in the dark alongside his caddie Ricky Elliott. “After I’ve played here I’ve gone to Lake Nona and beat balls until it was dark. We were hitting, Ricky had the camera phone out and was shining it about two feet above the ground,” Koepka said. “Every day we’re grinding, practicing, trying to figure it out and eventually all the hard work’s going to pay off. It’s just a matter of how quick it’s going to turn.”
Time is not his ally. The Players Championship is four days from now. The Masters is 32 days away. And in 67 days Koepka will go to the PGA Championship in San Francisco trying to become the first man to win the same major three straight times in more than 60 years.
After finishing at 9-over-par, Koepka headed to the car park 90 minutes before the man he dismissed as a rival, Rory McIlroy, teed off in the penultimate group. A few weeks ago, McIlroy dislodged him from atop the world rankings, and Koepka confessed that getting the No. 1 slot back is a goal. “Yeah, it’s important,” he said, before adding with a sardonic smile, “but if you play like this, you got a long way to go.”
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