British Open: It’s Brooks Koepka’s world, everyone else is just playing in it

It wasn’t all that long ago — Feb. 15, to be exact — that to any reasonable eye Brooks Koepka looked cashed. Cooked. Washed. Pick your synonym for “finished,” and it fit. Feb. 15 marked the debut of “Full Swing,” the Netflix series following a dozen of the world’s finest golfers. Koepka had won more majors than almost all of them, but sure didn’t seem to belong in their number. Broken, lost, staring at a vast empty shelf in his home reserved for a trophy that looked like it would never come, Koepka’s story was deemed so depressing that the Netflix producers moved it from first to second in the order.

Funny what a difference a few months makes.

Koepka sat down for his Tuesday morning British Open news conference looking like a man with the world at his feet. Sporting a snow-white Nike ballcap and form-fitting pullover — the better to show off his very un-golfer-like guns — Koepka radiated the kind of easy jock confidence that was completely missing from his Netflix episode.

And why not? It’s been nothing but blue skies since those dark days of last spring. Koepka has signed with LIV and banked millions — perhaps tens of millions, perhaps more — while also finding his game again, dueling Jon Rahm on Masters Sunday and capturing the PGA Championship, his fifth major, in May.

That run brought back memories of 2018 and 2019, when Koepka was all but untouchable. During that run, he won three of the seven majors in which he played, and finished in the top four in three more. Asked if he felt like he was maintaining his major-winning form from earlier this year, Koepka responded in his laconic-gunfighter style.

“I feel like I'm playing just as good. Still feel pretty disciplined, focused. Game is there. I've been practicing quite a bit,” he said. “It's a major, so probably should be up for it,” he added with a slight smile ahead of the year's final major which begins Thursday at Royal Liverpool Golf Course.

Getting “up for it” has been Koepka’s entire ethos for most of his career. He has nine PGA Tour wins, and five of them are majors.

He’s also won twice on the LIV Golf tour, if that matters … which, to Koepka, it doesn’t seem to. Unlike his LIV brethren, who have preened and strutted and tried hard to convince golf fans that anyone, anywhere cares about the RangeGoats or 4Aces, Koepka has approached his LIV career the way you approach yard work — a necessary task rewarding in itself, but nothing to celebrate. He didn’t even visibly sport the logos of his own team — Smash GC, but you knew that — when speaking to the media Tuesday.

Instead, he tried hard to downplay the significance of the planned partnership between LIV Golf’s financial parent, the Saudi Public Investment Fund, and the PGA Tour. He sidestepped requests for overarching analysis (“I don't have enough information on it to even know how to feel, what to think”) and avoided tipping his hand in any direction (“I have no control over anything. Why am I going to worry about something I can't control?”).

“It's a bunch of what-ifs and scenarios and nothing is finalized,” he later said. “You don't count the winner here on Saturday just because they're at the top of the leaderboard. You wait until Sunday to find that out. When all is said and done, we'll see what happens.”

And why should he worry about what’s next? If the PGA Tour-LIV Golf partnership has a true winner, it’s Koepka. He jumped to LIV when the money came his way, got himself back into major-winning shape, won a major and contended for another, and now finds that the entire golf world has caught up to where he’s been standing for months. He doesn’t have to worry about major exemptions for at least another five years.

He’s also sidestepped all the personality conflicts and drama that have detonated between the two tours. Unlike, say, Sergio Garcia and Phil Mickelson, he hasn’t taken shots or made enemies out of his former Tour allies.

“I've always been friends with all those guys,” he said Tuesday. “We've all been friends. We still see each other. I think everybody thinks there's this [rift] with LIV and the PGA Tour that the players are actually divided, and I don't think that's the case at all.”

A victory this week would put Koepka just one green jacket short of a career Grand Slam. He stands as one of the favorites to win, not far behind Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler — the same Scottie Scheffler Koepka watched with envy and despair in that Netflix show, last year and so long ago.

Now? Now he’s walking with purpose and stride, ready to enter instant-Hall of Fame territory with a sixth major. Asked what part of his game he felt most confident in coming into this week, Koepka didn’t hesitate.

“Hopefully all of it,” he said. “I'll let you know Sunday.”