Despite a flurry of late bogeys, Brooks Koepka eventually signed off on an inevitable victory at the US PGA Championship in New York on Sunday. A fourth Major win in eight starts, Koepka is currently the game’s dominant force – and it’s through the heady mix of power and touch (mostly power) that he gets the job done.
A chink of daylight emerged for Dustin Johnson after Koepka’s lead was whittled down to just one, but Johnson could force the issue home and suffered bogeys of his own on 16 and 17 to fall short.
Here’s a breakdown of Koepka’s stats for the week on the Black Course at Bethpage State Park:
- Fairways hit: 32 of 56 (T44)
- Driving distance: 304.9 yards (3rd)
- Greens hit: 53 of 72 (1st)
- Proximity to the hole: 30’, 1” (2nd)
Strokes Gained statistics:
- Tee-to-Green: +17.354 (1st)
- Off-the-Tee: +6.694 (2nd)
- Approach: +9.533 (1st)
- Around-the-Green: +1.128 (31st)
- Putting: +1.148 (46th)
- Total: +18.502 (1st)
Now lets take a look at some of the achievements he reeled off:
He became the first player in history to defend both the PGA Championship and the US Open in a career and he follows Bobby Nichol (1964), Jack Nicklaus (1971), Raymond Floyd (1982) and Hal Sutton (1983) as wire-to-wire victors at the PGA.
Four of his six US PGA Tour wins are Majors and he has one career win on the European Tour, four on the Challenge Tour and two in Japan. His opening round 63 saw him become only the third player in history to card that number in different Majors, joining Vijay Singh and Greg Norman.
