Matthew Coritz

New York was rocking, and two horses had pulled away from the field. Rather than the final straightaway of the Belmont, this was the back nine on Sunday. Brooks Koepka and Viktor Hovland had separated themselves from the field and it was 3 holes for all the glory. Koepka had a shot in hand, 1 ahead of Hovland as they stepped to the tee. Hovland went first and pushed it just a touch right getting an unlucky bounce into the fairway bunker. Advantage Koepka. All he was looking to do was find the short stuff and it could be smooth sailing from there. But he too blocked one right into the gnarly rough that had eaten up competitors’ chances all week. Hovland was away and was staring at the big lip between him and a chance at a taste of that first Major Championship glory. He pulled 9 iron not thinking twice, and he stepped up to the make-or-break shot. He swung, made contact, and everyone watching turned their heads to the green trying to find where the shot would drop. The ball never got out of the bunker. It embedded in the lip and forced a drop and pitchout shot from Hovland. What Koepka did next was as lethal a shot that you may ever see. While Hovland’s whole bunker ordeal may have lasted 10 minutes, Koepka’s lash of a pitching wedge from the rough to 5 feet took all of about 10 seconds. Koepka has said it himself, he hangs around the top of leaderboards in the majors, never forces anything, and when his opponent blinks, he strikes. Much easier said than done with the nerves and stakes involved at Majors but Brooks backs up all his talk. He’s like a boxer that controls a fight until the final round, and right when his opponent provides an opening he slips in for the knockout punch.

It was a long journey back to this world-beater, major championship juggernaut player that Brooks once was. After multiple years of injuries and doubts, as seen very openly through the Full Swing profile Netflix did, that guy seems to be back. And this time it feels different. When we last saw Brooks with the Wanamaker Trophy in his hands, he seemed to really lean into the apathetic douche character. The “I don’t really practice” persona that seemed cool and different but never painted the full picture. This time around there’s a maturity to it, having been humbled after seeing how quickly it all can go downhill. He had to put in the work and grind he did. The guy is a winner, but don’t ever let him fool with that early career talk about how easy it was. Don’t get me wrong there’s still that ultra-alpha in there that has said he can just “eliminate 80 guys from the field because I’m just better than them” when discussing his success at majors, but this time around it seems a lot more on the confident side than the cocky past version. 

There was another storyline that stole the show over the weekend up at Oak Hill. That was the fairy tale of Michael Block. The Block Party you could call it. Golf isn’t like most other sports. You don’t see a High School football coach get to play in the Super Bowl. You don’t get to see a shooting trainer get minutes in the NBA Finals. But golf offers the same chance, and as long as you can get the ball in the hole in as few shots as possible, it doesn’t matter whether you’re old or young, tall or short, scrawny or built, you can compete. And compete Michael Block did. It was an unprecedented performance in the modern era of golf, and with steady play all week he ended up in a tie for 15th guaranteeing him a return trip next year. Polishing off the story with a slam dunk ace at the 15th hole on Sunday while playing with arguably the most famous golfer of this era is a moment straight out of the cheesiest writer’s script. It was beautiful to see throughout the week you could see the raw emotion and how much it meant to him. Stories like this are what makes this game truly one of a kind.

To be completely honest I didn’t love Oak Hill. It was super hard, which was a Major Championship should be but something felt off to me. As I write this article a week on from the tournament, I find myself not really recalling any holes or shots that players had to hit that I loved watching. The short par 14th was pretty cool, but man did the broadcast really want to let you know how cool it was and shove it down your throat. It was like they thought they had to convince me how cool the golf course was. Also, man was that rough gnarly. At times there weren’t really opportunities to make recovery shots. Watching golfers take their medicine and punch out is fun from time to time. It’s relatable and it’s humbling, but I don’t want to watch it all week long, that’s just not fun. The main problem I had with it was that the PGA Championship just lacks a brand. This gets talked about a lot of years but it really is true. The Masters is in a world of its own with Augusta. The US Open is the toughest test in golf and every year at a classic brutal American course, the grittiest man wins. Finally, The Open is golf at its beautiful roots. The PGA Championship is the odd man out and I really want it to go back to its original Match Play format. Match play is played at every level of golf from College and High School team golf, to the money game between friends at the local Muni. I think a format modeled after the US Amateur is ideal, with 2-3 rounds of stroke play to weed out the non-competitors than a full-on bracket-style format to the finish. It’s a roller coaster of entertainment and would give Match Play the platform and love it deserves at the highest level of golf.