Around the wider world of golf: Na Yeon Choi won the Coates Golf Championship on the LPGA (and Lydia Ko became the youngest #1, male or female, ever); Rory McIlroy won the Omega Dubai Desert Classic on the ET; and Mathew Goggin won the Panama Claro Championship on the Web.com Tour.
And in case you missed it, the New England Patriots won the Super Bowl. Keegan Bradley's probably STILL celebrating.
It was all set up to be Martin Laird's tournament.
Or Hideki Matsuyama's. Or Bubba Watson's. Or Ryan Palmer's. Or Zach Johnson's. Heck, even Freddie Jacobson and Jordan Spieth made realistic runs at the lead.
But in the end Brooks Koepka showed why so many people think he's one of those "next big thing" guys in American golf. Only 4 players shot better scores than his bogey-free 5-under 66, and his 51-foot eagle putt on the par-5 15th pretty much sucked the air out of everybody else's balloons. And the drive he gutted down that tight fairway on 18 popped any that refused to deflate willingly.
Brooks has 6 pro wins now -- 4 on the European Challenge Tour (for US fans, that's sort of like a Euro Web.com), 1 on the ET, and 1 on the PGA Tour. The ET win, the Turkish Airlines Open, is a Race to Dubai tournament that's a Who's Who of European golf, and now he's beaten some serious class at Phoenix. With his Tour card now locked up for a couple of years and a valid ET card as well -- in addition to being well within the Top50 in the world, which gets him in all the majors and WGCs -- we could see Brooks run up a nice record in the near future.
In fact, I think you have to consider him a very real contender at Augusta. Rory, Rickie, Bubba & Co. better keep an eye on their rearview mirrors -- Brooks may be even closer than he appears!
In the meantime, Brooks gets his first-ever Limerick Summary (Christina Kim got it the week Brooks won), and I doubt that it will be his last:
This U.S. win took time for KoepkaThe photo came from the tournament upshot page at PGATOUR.com.
But fans gazed in shock as he leapt the
Few players between
Him and vict’ry. I mean,
The one thought in their heads was: “What kept ya?”
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