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Few Americans have set out on the same path to major glory as Brooks Koepka. Perhaps none. After graduation, the new 2017 US Open champion failed to gain a card at the US or European qualifying schools, and packed his bags to play on the European Challenge Tour. <\/p>\n
He went on to compete in 25 countries across three continents, requiring 20 extra pages for his passport, and staying in B&Bs with three roommates. He won the Challenge de Catalunya at Callafel in Tarragona in that first season as a pro (2012), and the following year won three more times (Montecchia Open in Italy, Fred Olsen Challenge de Espa\u00f1a and Scottish Hydro Challenge) to earn an immediate promotion to the main European Tour. <\/p>\n
But it could all have gone awry. The Scottish event (in June 2013) was his eighth in nine weeks, and the then 23-year-old was ready to come home, even though he held the third-round lead. He phoned his manager, Blake Smith, that night and vented. \u201cHe was burned out, worn out,\u201d recalled Smith. \u201cIt was just so much travel, but we were trying to pump him up and tell him to finish it off.\u201d <\/p>\n
That travel throughout 2013 took him to tournaments in 15 different countries. \u201cNot only was he honing his golf skills and learning how to win,\u201d reported the US PGA Tour after his US Open win, \u201che was seeing much more of the world than most people in their early 20s. He ate horsemeat in Kazakhstan. In Kenya, he stepped into a car for a 20-minute trip to his hotel \u2013 but the driver made it a terrifying three-hour ride. \u2018I was freaking out,\u2019 Koepka recalled.\u201d <\/p>\n
He took his manager\u2019s advice that night in Scotland, and in 2014 he won the Turkish Airlines Open on the European Tour on the way to picking up rookie of the year honours.<\/p>\n
The following year he returned to more familiar territory on the US PGA Tour, and won the Waste Management Phoenix Open. Back on an international flight last year, he picked up the Dunlop Phoenix title in Japan. <\/p>\n
Now he is a major winner, in part thanks to his predecessor as US Open champion, Dustin Johnson.<\/p>\n
Brooks Koepka answered his phone on Saturday night at the US Open and on the other end was Johnson, who had missed the cut at Erin Hills a day earlier. The Tour picks up the story\u2026 <\/p>\n
\u201cThe two are close friends, and Johnson wanted to wish Koepka the best of luck \u2013 and offer a bit of advice on how to successfully chase down a first major victory. Johnson talked about staying patient and staying with the game plan. Told Koepka not to get ahead of himself, to hang in there whenever dicey situations developed, take it one shot at a time. There might have been other bits of conversation between the two. \u2018Probably not that much that\u2019s interesting,\u2019 Koepka admitted later. Then they hung up. It had been two minutes. \u2018That\u2019s a long phone call for us,\u2019 Koepka said, a sly nod to the aversion both players have for rambling conversations. <\/p>\n
\u201cOr more likely, any conversations. But the length \u2013 or lack thereof \u2013 didn\u2019t make it any less important. Depending on how much you\u2019re willing to read between the lines, perhaps it was Johnson\u2019s subtle way of tabbing Koepka as his successor, of offering his seal of approval.\u2019I think it\u2019s pretty special for two guys to become very, very close off the golf course as they are on the golf course,\u2019 said Claude Harmon III, Koepka\u2019s swing coach. \u2018\u2026That was a big thing, to get a call from DJ.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cOn Sunday, Koepka completed the line of succession, shooting a five-under 67 to win by four strokes over Brian Harman and Hideki Matsuyama. By shooting 16-under for the week, he tied the 72-hole record set six years by Rory McIlroy at Congressional.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was way more confident this week than I\u2019ve ever been,\u201d Kopeka said later. \u201cI felt like I was striking the ball really well, I was putting the ball in the fairway \u2013 which you need to do out here \u2013 and then I was putting so well. \u201cIt\u2019s for all the hours that you put in and things like that. You look back a couple of years ago to be on the Challenge Tour, four guys driving around in a little mini car, four golf bags packed in there, to be the US Open champ is pretty cool. \u201cTo go over to Europe and kind of cut your teeth over there and be able to play in different conditions is what you need to do. I built on those wins on the Challenge Tour; any time you can win you\u2019re going to have confidence and I look back at those.\u201d <\/p>\n
Koepka was the seventh straight first-time major champion, a run that extends back to Jason Day\u2019s 2015 US PGA Championship victory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Few Americans have set out on the same path to major glory as Brooks Koepka. Perhaps none. After graduation, the new 2017 US Open champion failed to gain a card at the US or European qualifying schools, and packed his bags to play on the European Challenge Tour. He went on to compete in 25 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":7156,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}