While full of praise for Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka was highly critical of crowd control measures at the final hole of the 103rd PGA Championship at Kiawah Island.
PGA Championship organisers allowed 10,000 fans a day to attend the championship and the majority seemed to flood onto the final fairway in scenes reminiscent of Tiger Woods 2018 Tour Championship triumph in suburban Atlanta.
And while Mickelson spoke afterwards saying … “It was a little bit unnerving but it was exceptionally awesome, too” … that’s not how Koepka felt and going as far as to suggest some fans were deliberate in their actions of intentionally bumping up against his still-recovering right knee.
“It would have been cool if I didn’t have a knee injury and got dinged a few times in the knee in that crowd because no one really gave a shit, personally,” Koepka said in posting a closing round 74 and share second place two shots adrift of Mickelson.
Brooks Koepka will get over the pain of fans ‘dinging’ his injured knee but it may take longer to get over the pain of losing to Phil Mickelson
Koepka will get over the physical of his knee being ‘dinged’ but the big question now is, will the 30-year old get over the mental anguish?
Many believed Koepka would brush the aging Mickelson aside to capture a third PGA Championship and his fifth major, and that seemed to be the scenario when there was a two-shot swing at the first when Koepka and Mickelson bogeyed.
Though Mickelson was not to be denied and with the overwhelming weight of the crowd on his side, the soon-to-be 51-year-old strode triumphantly up the last albeit having to also fight his way onto the final green.
For Koepka, it was a second bridesmaid role in the majors and a 10th top-10, excluding his pair of US Open and also two PGA Championship titles.
“I’m super disappointed, pretty bummed,” he said.
“I’m not happy. I don’t know if there’s a right word I can say here without getting fined, but it hurts a little bit. It’s one of those things where I just never felt comfortable over the putts. I don’t know why, what happened.”
It is the second year running Koepka at the PGA Championship Koepka has let slip victory.
A year ago, he entered the final round at Harding Park two shots off the lead and finished with the second-highest score of the day (74) that dropped him into a tie for 29th.
This year, his undoing started on the second hole when he had to lay-up out of the bunker and then needed two shots to get out of the rough. But it got worse during a seven-hole stretch starting at the par-5 seventh hole when he hit one of the six fairways and made four bogeys.
And we remember two years ago when Koepka paused play at least once on his back nine of the Masters to take a peek at Tiger Woods, as Tiger was completing his stunning victory.
Koepka finished tied for second on that day, too.
