PGA Championship: Brooks Koepka survives collapse to defend Wanamaker trophy and win fourth major

The 29-year-old battled through a disastrous back-nine to clinch a fourth major title

Brooks Koepka stood on the 15th tee at Bethpage Black, stone-face chipping as he stared into the abyss of one of the most devastating collapses in golf history. Having held a six-shot lead with eight holes to play, the imperious closer had unravelled in four ugly bogeys in succession. His drives were hooking right, his short-game was tense and heavy-handed and his putting stroke had turned limp. The gap between himself and Dustin Johnson was just one and the raucous New York crowd sung the latter’s name, cooing every chink in the defending champion’s armour, watching with glee as his nerveless arrogance wilted bare.

The three days prior had been treated with robotic precision as Koepka raced into a record-breaking seven-shot lead, waltzing with cocksure swagger, baring his teeth as he clamped onto the promise of a fourth major championship with a crocodile vice grip. But ultimately, the hardest challenge would lie in how easy his procession to the PGA Championship was supposed to be. After such a metronomic blur of repetition, Koepka had finally blinked, and then came the malfunction.

Yet just as all threatened to heave upside down, it was Johnson who suffered irreversible capitulation down the home straight. Creaking bogeys on 16 and 17 stretched Koepka’s lead back to three, and despite an angst-riddled three-putt of his own on the penultimate hole, Koepka clawed back the last remnants of his diamond-like resilience to haul himself over the line with a 74 – victory by two.

It was Koepka’s fourth major victory in his last eight starts, a staggering statistic the sport hasn’t known since Tiger Woods’ prime almost two decades ago. He returns to world No 1 and becomes the first man since Jordan Spieth in 2015 to win a major wire-to-wire, and so the records churn on.

Earlier in the week, Koepka had claimed majors were the easiest tournament to win. This time? “I am just glad we didn’t have to play any more holes,” he said. “That was a stressful round of golf. The wind was up, DJ was awesome but I’m glad to have this trophy back in my hands. I don’t even know if I dreamed of this. I’m still in shock.”

The cracks to Koepka’s mechanic demeanour had already emerged on a grinding front-nine. A bogey on the opening hole unsettled him, an errant tee-shot off the sixth clipped a tree, soared back over the heads of the obnoxiously partisan crowd, and into the fairway.

On the tenth, it had seemed as though normal service was set to resume. Ten minutes earlier, Johnson’s birdie-putt had leaked past the high-side of the hole with the chance to close the gap to three. Koepka’s spectacular wedge then landed inside three foot and seemed for all sense to have provided the final dagger until his unfathomable buckle.

Koepka celebrates on the 18th green Getty) (Getty)

It began with a bogey at 11 that deterred his momentum, a wild drive on the 12th from where he could only hack from the thickset fescue back into the fairway and escape with another bogey. The 13th relied on another stroke of fortune to see his free-spraying drive settle on a trodden down lie. By the time he boarded the 14th tee, well-lined fans shouted ‘choke’ as his tee-shot skipped 20 yards over the back of the green.

Had Johnson’s bottle not deserted him, few could with any confidence that Koepka would’ve left this treacherous course with a well-deserved victory. He was always the favourite this week, but not with the fans. His stone-faced and standoffish demeanour brings little in thrill, his open declaration of “boredom” with the sport he’s so begrudgingly talented in portrays little by way of humility. On Saturday evening, thousands of those in Farmingdale had flooded home long before he had even finished his third round.

But as Koepka climbed the sheer slope to the 18th green, letting glimpse a wry, sighing smile, the fickle crowd called his name in unison. The manner of this vulnerable victory was unlike any of the three which came before in how Koepka had somehow pulled himself back from disaster’s clutches. And, in doing so, he finally endeared himself to all, via courage and admiration if not affection.