NFL Reporter
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MIAMI — Brooks Koepka lastly acquired dwelling to West Palm Seashore at 12:30 a.m. It was April 10, 2023. And thank goodness, as a result of that meant it wasn’t April 9, the date Koepka blew the lead at The Masters. At the very least, that is what you would possibly guess Koepka was pondering.
However Koepka wasn’t executed with April 9. He wasn’t executed with The Masters. Moderately than head to mattress, the golfer went to the porch along with his buddy Dan Gambill. They stayed up all night time. Not drowning their sorrows. It was really the entire reverse.
Koepka and Gambill labored by means of each single shot from Koepka’s closing spherical at Augusta. No tablets or telephones had been crucial. They only labored from Koepka’s reminiscence — his psychological archive of the spherical. It will need to have been brutally painful to recount his three-over-par spherical after beginning the day with a two-shot lead. It will need to have been painful to determine how Jon Rahm completed atop the leaderboard by 4 strokes.
However Koepka is not one to shrink back from discomfort. He ripped off the band-aid. And if he hadn’t, he seemingly would not have gained the PGA Championship one month later, his first victory in a significant since 2019. It was a crucial “constructing” second, he mentioned.
“You must be actually truthful with it and break it down into the best factors and actually assess it,” he informed FOX Sports activities on the LIV Golf Miami event final week. “I feel that is in all probability certainly one of my higher qualities. I can actually assess it and determine it out. We realized why the end result went that method.”
Out on that porch, Koepka mentioned he recounted the next for every shot: 1) the plan and thought course of, 2) the place it missed, 3) what the shot felt like and 4) whether or not the execution was there.
That took greater than six hours.
It is typical for Koepka, who’s presently tenth within the LIV particular person standings this season, to do that after a loss. It is part of his course of. What was atypical was the urgency with which he approached the breakdown. It needed to occur that morning.
“You do not ever mirror in your wins,” he mentioned. “I mirror extra on the losses, attempting to determine why. Why sure occasions occurred. Why I hit it right here. Why was the execution fallacious? What was the thought course of? What went awry? So we simply narrowed it down and we figured it out.”
When the solar rose at about 7 a.m., Koepka went to mattress with a revelation about his sport.
You are in all probability inquisitive about what he realized.
Properly, he isn’t telling.
“I will not inform anyone,” he mentioned with a smirk. “I do not even know if my spouse is aware of.”
On the subject of self-critique, the method is simply as vital as the end result for Koepka. Significantly with regards to successful main championships.
“I feel the majors, loads of it is extra psychological than something. You have to determine why. You have a look at all of the second locations that I’ve had. These are those the place you mirror extra,” he mentioned.
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Koepka mentioned he has 4 second-place finishes in majors, however he is really had solely three. Perhaps the act of drawing them out on this method makes the quantity really feel bigger. But it surely’s the lifetime of an athlete: finding out the unhealthy performances to present method for enchancment. And if we realized something from his look on Netflix’s “Full Swing,” Koepka appears to toil as a lot as any golfer.
“Clearly, there have been errors, so you bought to just be sure you by no means make that mistake once more. I am OK with making a brand new mistake, yeah? After which correcting it,” he mentioned. “You then go, like, ‘That is life,’ proper? You are gonna make errors, however simply do not make the identical mistake once more.”
Perhaps he will not inform us this specific revelation. However when he first revealed the details about this all-nighter to YouTuber Rick Shiels, there have been extra slivers of the key round his 2023 Masters efficiency.
“I acquired so obsessed and centered on — I needed it so unhealthy that that was the issue,” Koepka mentioned. “All you have to do is end 18 extra holes. I acquired to this point forward. And whenever you get to this point forward, you lose what is going on on. It simply turned a catastrophe and a snowball impact, and also you’re simply happening and down.”
Then he added: “It’ll assist me years down the highway now.”
It wasn’t a golden bullet.
These do not exist in golf, a sport that Koepka repeatedly informed me is about “lacking within the appropriate spot that you just’re attempting to overlook it.” It is nearly a double adverse, and it is sufficient to make your membership head spin.
Final yr, he was forty fifth in The Masters and did not have a top-20 end in any of the majors — that are sometimes Koepka’s specialty. But it surely’s not like he hasn’t discovered success elsewhere. Koepka gained two LIV tournaments final season. This yr, he does not have a person win after 5 tournaments, however he went to a playoff with Rahm in Singapore. And over his LIV Golf profession, Koepka has a third-place end in 2023 and a fifth-place end in 2024 within the particular person championship standings. At tenth proper now, he is inside putting distance of the highest of the leaderboard.
Brooks Koepka’s finest moments at LIV Golf Singapore
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He had a forgettable outing at LIV Miami final weekend, when he completed tied for 18th at four-over par. With gusty winds and quick greens at Trump Nationwide Doral, Koepka was regular (taking pictures 73, 74 and 73 in his three rounds), however he did not have any actually particular days to vault himself into competition.
It was good for Masters prep, with all of Augusta Nationwide’s bodily and psychological challenges. But it surely’s exhausting to say if it will be indicative of the place his sport stands heading into Masters week, notably for Koepka, who is understood to rise to the event when main season kicks off.
“I am sometimes a gradual starter. It takes me a couple of occasions simply to sort of get snug and determine the place my sport’s at,” he mentioned. “After which from there, simply sort of have somewhat little bit of a regroup. … Sort of taking place after Singapore, simply to be sure that, OK, that is what we acquired to do. Get some stats again. Take a look at some issues and determine, nicely, why is that this this fashion? After which actually assault that.
“And you then spend the final two weeks actually honing in on it and ensuring that any little cracks are buttoned up. You’re feeling such as you’ve acquired a very good sense of really feel, contact — whether or not it’s across the greens. I feel that is large for Augusta.”
He appears to know a couple of different issues about Augusta which can be large — even when he will not inform us. However nobody is hoping greater than Koepka that these secrets and techniques will lead him again to the highest of the leaderboard at The Masters on Sunday.
Previous to becoming a member of FOX Sports activities as an NFL reporter and columnist, Henry McKenna spent seven years protecting the Patriots for USA TODAY Sports activities Media Group and Boston Globe Media. Comply with him on Twitter at @henrycmckenna.
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