AUGUSTA, Ga. -- Two months ago, Brooks Koepka pouted and sulked his way through a fascinating episode depicting the 2022 Masters in the Netflix special, "Full Swing." The denouement came when he shot 75-75 in the first two rounds, missed the cut and bemoaned, "I'll be honest with you guys, I can't compete with these guys week in and week out."
On Thursday at the 2023 Masters, just one year after a despairing Koepka looked like he was cooked as a major championship golfer, he shot his best round ever at Augusta National with an eight-birdie 65. He sits tied for the lead with Jon Rahm and Viktor Hovland after 18 holes.
"Anytime with something like that, you don't see everything, right?" Koepka said of the notable episode. "A lot of it, it's all injury-based."
Koepka seemed reasonably healthy entering last year's Masters, notching four top 20s in six starts prior to that event. He insists he is far healthier now, perhaps even close to his former 100% self.
"Once you feel good," he said, "everything changes."
What's interesting about this is, well, the data. Following a missed cut at the 2021 Masters -- that was the famous one in which he came in three weeks off a surgery and had to extended his leg out to the side as he tried to read putts -- Koepka actually crushed at the rest of the majors, finishing T2, T4 and T6 consecutively. That was the year he narrowly lost to Phil Mickelson at the PGA Championship at Kiawah just two months after surgery.
So, wait a second, did his knee get worse in 2022 (when the despairing Netflix episode happened and his best finish at the majors was a T55) than it was in 2021 two months after surgery? But now, it's healthy again?
That's what it sounds like Koepka is insinuating.
"It's a new normal," Koepka said of his health, "but it's definitely pretty close [now] to what it was [when I was younger]."
Koepka has always been a bit ambiguous with his injuries, often deflecting and highlighting the dramatic over the actual timeline. On Thursday, he said at one point, "I dislocated my knee and then I tried to put it back in." He even said in the fall that he was eventually going to need a right knee replacement.
So, what's going on here? What's at the bottom of all of this? Why all the misdirection in the discussion around his knee?
I have a theory: Brooks Koepka is terribly scared of failure. Like the rest of us. It's just that his fear of failure plays out on bigger stages and has higher historical stakes than our own. That's a difficult concept with which to deal.
Koepka built himself up to be a generational menace during his 2017-19 string of majors, and that became his entire aura. He always exuded that "do you have any idea how easy it is for me to be this great?" gait that closed out so many big-boy tournaments. It was compelling, and he loved that he knew that other people knew it.
But when it went poorly at the end of the 2019 PGA Championship (even though he won) and at the end of the 2020 PGA Championship (when he didn't) and at the end of the 2021 PGA Championship (when a 51-year-old Phil Mickelson rope-a-doped him into the Atlantic), his own failure -- what scared him the most, the price he couldn't afford -- settled in.
So now, sometimes what you see is somebody who is surly, somebody who has existential dread and somebody who has convinced himself that the only thing keeping him from more major championships is an element of his game he mostly cannot control: his health.
Perhaps that's true. Perhaps nobody can beat Koepka when he's healthy. But is he even healthy now? He claims to be, and he won't change his tune this week. But if he doesn't follow through with real contention or a Masters victory this weekend, it could be easy to look back at this week (when let's suppose he shoots 66 in the first round of the U.S. Open) with Kopeka convincing himself, Oh, well I wasn't truly healthy at Augusta. Especially because, when you need a knee replacement, you're never truly healthy.
Success has a strange way of making us doubt ourselves, and injuries -- like the ones Koepka undoubtedly struggles to overcome -- become an easy place to shift some blame toward. The comical level of self-belief players have to maintain almost necessitates this. But remember: Koepka showed us his ceiling at that 2021 PGA just two months post-surgery. He was still doing rehab during that PGA but wrote it off, saying he could deal with the pain. He nearly won the whole thing. His injury is a problem, I'm not sure they are the problem.
Koepka's struggles seem to run a bit deeper than the physical. There's a psychological name for it: imposter syndrome. And it's quite a common theme, especially among those who have experienced a high level of success like Koepka. That Netflix episode from a year ago ... it may have partly been about injuries, but it sure seemed like it was about a lot more than that. You don't talk about what's going on in Scottie Scheffler's head if all you're dealing with is an injury.
I can't shake the view of Koepka, down on the dock at the end of his episode, staring at the sea, wondering what his future held. For now, it holds nobody in front of him at this year's Masters. In a past life, Koepka's name at the top of a leaderboard like this would have engendered fear from everyone else in the tournament. Now, I wonder if it doesn't elicit some of his own.
Here are a few more thoughts on Round 1.
Jon Rahm's bounce
After making a double-bogey 6 on the first hole, Rahm played the last 17 at Augusta National in 59 strokes, gained 8.0 strokes from tee to green and sits tied for the lead with Koepka and Hovland. It was the lowest score to par for any golfer in Masters history who began his round with a double bogey or worse. That extraordinary juxtaposition of the first hole vs. the next 17 is emblematic of who Rahm is at major championships, and it's a reminder that he doesn't get enough credit for his resilient mental game. Rahm has caught a lot of flak over the years for his temper (at times, deservingly so), but he should also receive praise for his ability to endure a jarring start and claw all the way to the top of the leaderboard.
"If you're going to make a double or four-putt or anything, it might as well be the first hole," said Rahm. "[You have] 71 holes to make it up. After that, it was more, I was focused on the fact that all the strokes were good. The reads were good. The roll was good. Obviously, the speed was off on the first two putts, so once I kind of accepted that there was nothing really to look into, I just got to work and I had 17 holes to make up."
Sam Bennett's Round 1 show
Bennett might be who we thought Gordon Sargent would be. Bennett opened 3-4 on the first two holes and didn't let off the gas. The U.S. Amateur champ is mega-talented, although Sargent came into the week with far more hype. And while some of the shots Sargent hit made me gasp out loud on the golf course, Thursday anyway was a Trackman golfer vs. get-the-ball-in-the-hole golfer. It's certainly not as pretty as Sargent, but Bennett looked like he belonged with the No. 1 player in the world, who he played with (and whose score he matched) in Round 1.
Top 10 in Round 1
Since 2005, only Tiger Woods has come from outside the top 10 after the first round of the Masters to win the tournament. If that statistic holds -- and I believe it will -- your Masters winner will be one of the following golfers:
- Viktor Hovland
- Jon Rahm
- Brooks Koepka
- Cameron Young
- Jason Day
- Shane Lowry
- Xander Schauffele
- Adam Scott
- Gary Woodland
- Scottie Scheffler
- Sam Bennett
- Sam Burns
Spieth: Insane in the membrane
Spieth's round can be summed up in one quote and one screenshot.
Here's the quote: "I made seven birdies, so I wish I posted a lower number."
It's the most Spieth of all Spieth quotes.
And here's the screenshot from after Spieth hit his approach on No. 13 into Rae's Creek.
Absolutely howling 😂 pic.twitter.com/5ha8VSYGAp
— Kyle Porter (@KylePorterCBS) April 6, 2023
Spieth shot 32 on the front, and you knew it was going to get weird from there. Of course it did. He hit it in the water on No. 11 and then again on his approach at No. 13, playing Amen Corner in 3 over. It was typical Spieth, then, to birdie two of his last four to get his round back to 3 under, keeping him in the mix. This is the fourth time he's opened with a round in the 60s at Augusta. In the other three, he's gone on to finish in the top three.
Scottie vs. Rahm
That's what the tournament is going to come down to. Scheffler shot the easiest 68 you've ever seen in your life, gaining 7.9 strokes from tee to green and finishing second to last in the field in putting. That won't happen all week, and when the flat stick starts to click, he's going to do what he's been doing for 15 straight months and start to put distance between him and the field. Rahm, it seems, is the only one who may be able to keep pace.