There was plenty of fist pumping from Tiger Woods yesterday but he finished two shots behind Brooks Koepka. Photo / AP
There was plenty of fist pumping from Tiger Woods yesterday but he finished two shots behind Brooks Koepka. Photo / AP
The roars were unlike anything Brooks Koepka had ever heard and he knew exactly what they meant.
They got louder for each birdie by Tiger Woods that moved him closer to the lead yesterday in the PGA Championship and Koepka could hear a ripple effect of noise.
First, real time. Seconds later, another burst from patrons watching on TV in chalets. Then, distant cheers from every corner of Bellerive when the score was posted.
"We knew what was going on," he said. "It's pretty obvious when Tiger makes a birdie. Everybody on the golf course cheers for him."
Amid relentless pandemonium, Koepka ran off three straight birdies to end the front nine and seize control. When he was tied with Adam Scott through 14 holes, with Woods one shot behind, he delivered back-to-back birdies.
The last one was a laser of a 4-iron from 226m that settled 6 feet away, sending him to a dream finish of a year that began with the 28-year-old Floridian wondering if a wrist injury that kept him out four months would ever allow him to compete again.
"That will probably go down as one of the best shots I've ever hit under pressure," he said.
He closed with a 4-under 66 for a two-shot victory over Woods and took his place among the elite in golf. Koepka became the fifth player to win the US Open and PGA Championship in the same year, joining Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan and Gene Sarazen.
It will be impossible to overlook him now, not with the Wanamaker Trophy to go with his back-to-back US Open titles. Koepka won two of the three majors he played this year, and three of his last six. Not since Woods won four in a row through the 2001 Masters has anyone won majors at such an alarming rate.
And yet it still felt - and certainly sounded - as though he played second billing to Woods.
The crowd was enormous, louder than anything in golf this side of Augusta National or a Ryder Cup, and Woods looked closer than ever to capping his comeback from four back surgeries with another major.
Brooks Koepka. Photo / AP
Even with two bogeys, Woods shot 64 for his lowest final round in a major. He finished at 266, beating by three shots his best 72-hole score in a major. At this major, it wasn't enough.
"I played hard," Woods said. "I made a bit of a run. It looks like I'm going to come up a little short."
Koepka was responsible for that. After wasting one chance to put it away by missing consecutive birdie chances from 7 feet, Koepka kept attacking flags and ran in birdie putts of 10 feet on No 15 and 7 feet on No16 to end the drama. He tapped in for par on the final hole to set the PGA Championship scoring record at 264. It also tied the major championship record that Henrik Stenson set at Royal Troon two years ago in the British Open.
He also joined Jordan Spieth, Woods, Nicklaus and Tom Watson as the only players with three majors before turning 30 since World War II.
"Three majors at 28 - it's a cool feeling," said Koepka, who five years ago was toiling in Europe's minor leagues.
Scott hung around by making big putts, just like he hoped, and was tied for the lead until Koepka's birdies.
The only knock on Koepka is that he doesn't win enough elsewhere - the Phoenix Open on the PGA Tour, the Turkish Airlines Open on the European Tour, and two victories at the Dunlop Phoenix on the Japan Golf Tour.
"He's won three majors now, so he's definitely winning the right ones," Scott said. "If I was him, I wouldn't change much. I'd just keep doing what he's doing because he's showing up at the right moments in the biggest events. There's something inside his brain that makes him believe that's what he's destined to do."
Woods delivered a performance that took golf back in time. He was relentless, pumping fists, raising the putter in his left hand, making birdies and charging towards a finish that caused pure pandemonium among one of the largest and noisiest crowds at a major.
Without hitting a fairway on the front nine, Woods cut the four-shot deficit to two.
That was as good as it got.
Facing the most important drive of the day on the par-5 17th, Woods sent it sailing to the right and it embedded in a hazard along the banks of a creek. He did well to advance it but had to save par from a bunker. Behind him, Koepka holed his two birdie putts.
Koepka never imagined a year like this. He missed four months at the start of the year with a partially torn tendon in his left wrist which caused him to sit out the Masters. He outlasted good friend Dustin Johnson at Shinnecock Hills to become the first back-to-back US Open champion in 29 years. And now this.
The only downer is having to wait eight months for the US Masters.
