World No. 1 Brooks Koepka said his left knee still isn’t 100 percent, but it’s good enough to start playing again.
He was among six golfers who participated in a contest where they fired golf balls on to a Formula 1 race track in the Middle East on Tuesday.
Koepka underwent a stem-cell procedure last fall for a partially torn patella tendon in his left knee, which had been bugging him since last March.
He was joined by Louis Oosthuizen, Danny Willett, Bernd Wiesberger, Matthew Fitzpatrick and Viktor Hovland in the Hero Challenge (not to be confused Tiger Woods’ Hero World Challenge, held in the Bahamas last month).
Tuesday’s event was at the Yas Marina Circuit to promote the European Tour’s Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship in the United Arab Emirates. This Hero did not have any waste bunkers (insert Patrick Reed joke here) but did feature some pretty great shot-making:
Sit back and relax.
Watch the #HeroChallenge highlights 🎥 pic.twitter.com/0sxjTBg7mw
— The European Tour (@EuropeanTour) January 14, 2020
Each of the golfers fired balls from a mat high up on a platform. It was like they were hitting off a cliff to a target down below that was 100 yards away.
An extra challenge was making sure not to plunk a Formula 1 car parked right in front the target.
Your winner? Viktor Hovland, who called it “My first professional win.”
Hovland faced off against Louis Oosthuizen in the final round. Wearing blue jeans, Hovland won by a score of 190-55 and through three rounds, never missed the target.
Talk about a dialed in wedge game.
Winning start to the week for Viktor 🏆#HeroChallenge pic.twitter.com/ORadN9x7VV
— The European Tour (@EuropeanTour) January 14, 2020
The HSBC Championship is the first of three consecutive European Tour events in the Middle East.
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