Brooks Koepka back to full strength after knee injury

There’s a line of demarcation in Rory McIlroy’s 2019-20 season, and it’s the PGA TOUR’s three-month layoff in which the entire sports world paused for the coronavirus pandemic. Before the TOUR shut things down after the first round of THE PLAYERS Championship in March, McIlroy – the defending FedExCup champion and Player of the Year – had six straight top-five finishes, including a win at the World Golf Championships-HSBC Champions. Since then? Five starts and just one top-30 finish, a T11 at the Travelers Championship. “Before the world sort of shut down, I was playing some really good golf, consistent,” McIlroy said from San Francisco’s chilly TPC Harding Park, where he is gearing up for this week’s PGA Championship. “And then yeah, having that three-month break, coming back, everything sort of changed. Everything feels different, in the competitive arena, anyway.” Not that McIlroy has faded into obscurity. Hardly. He’s fifth in the FedExCup, and had retained the No. 1 world ranking until losing it to Jon Rahm last month. (Rahm has since lost it to Justin Thomas.) No, the results for McIlroy have just been – flat. “My game doesn’t feel that far away,” he said. “I feel like I’ve played pretty well. I just haven’t got a lot out of my game. Haven’t scored as well as I was doing before the lockdown. … Haven’t been efficient as I was back then. Short game hasn’t quite been as sharp.” The question is why, and can he get it back. Coastal-adjacent TPC Harding Park, where he won the 2015 WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play, beating Gary Woodland in the final, is one of his happy places on the schedule, so a return to form there this week would not be entirely unexpected. Maybe there’s still some McIlroy mojo hovering up there in the marine layer. Granted, the layout and routing are different, and the course is playing longer, and with narrower fairways. The damp conditions are more or less the same. The sweater weather remains. Also, as McIlroy noted, the PGA setup man is still Kerry Haigh, whom he likes. (The PGA is the lone major McIlroy has won twice, at Kiawah in 2012 and Valhalla in 2014.) As for his relatively lackluster results, the chattering class has speculated about the why, and McIlroy hasn’t denied it. Having noted a certain week-to-week sameness in golf’s (and other pro sports’) quiet new normal, he suggested he has struggled to play without galleries. “He draws a lot of his energy from the fact that fans of all nationalities pull for him,” said Golf Channel analyst and former world No. 1 David Duval. “He’s a world-favorite player. Being out here where there are so (few) people around can take some adjustment.” McIlroy wouldn’t deny that, but knows things aren’t likely to change overnight as the virus shows no signs of going away. And he knows he’s going to have to find his A-game on his own. “I’ve said in the last few weeks that I’ve struggled to adapt to it,” he said, “but it is what it is. You need to go out there and do the best that you can. We all wish that we were playing in front of fans and have it feel like a real major championship, but I think we’re just lucky that we’re able to play golf tournaments at this point and grateful to PGA of America and all the governing bodies for adapting and pivoting and being able to put on these championships.” And again: He’s not far off. “I shot a 63 at Colonial,” he said. “I shot a 65 to make the cut at Hilton Head; a 63 at Travelers, a couple of good scores last week in Memphis. So the good stuff is in there. I was just saying earlier, it’s just the sharpness and being efficient with my scoring. “Turning the 73s that I’ve shot into 70s,” he added. “That’s the sort of stuff that I think when you’re sharp and you’re playing a bit and you’re sort of in your groove you’re able to do that a little better, and that’s the stuff that I haven’t been able to do since coming back out here.”

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PUNTA CANA, Dominican Republic – Enough was enough, Graeme McDowell said. There was to be no more messing up. After meetings with his team to talk about his efforts, poor finishes to tournaments, and just lackluster results for a guy who was once ranked in the top-10 in the world, the monkey came off his back Sunday in Punta Cana. McDowell shot a 3-under-par 69 in the final round of the Corales Puntacana Resort & Club Championship to win by one over Chris Stroud and Mackenzie Hughes – his fourth PGA TOUR win. The 39-year-old came into the week wanting to play well, earn some much-needed FedExCup points, and hoped to get some momentum heading into a busy summer stretch as he tries to qualify for this year’s Open Championship at Royal Portrush – in his hometown in Northern Ireland. This win checks all three of those boxes. “I said that I was here on a mission, I was here motivated, and the attitude was going to be very, very important this week,â€� said McDowell. “This one’s a pretty sweet victory. It feels a bit like the victory at Mayakoba… it comes at the end of a long grind. This one’s been coming.â€� This win, he said, has given him the confidence he needs to continue to play with some of the world’s best. He said with his playing privileges secured and with a big jump in the FedExCup standings, he’s going to playing much looser moving forward. “That’s when I play my best, when I’m loose, when I’m just trying to compete every week rather than needing it as badly. I’ve been needing it too much lately and this is going to go a long way to helping me stop needing it and just going out there and just playing golf to try and compete every week. That’s what I’m looking for,â€� he said. “This is a huge relief, this win. I’ve got to be honest, massive relief.â€� McDowell has long admitted that life got in the way of him playing some good golf since his win in 2015 at the Mayakoba Golf Classic. He finished 160th on the FedExCup standings in 2015, 136th in 2017, and 144th in 2018. He had to take all of January off as he battled a wrist injury. Up to this point he had no top-10’s on the year, and was just plodding along without much to show for his efforts. He’s missed only one cut, but there hasn’t yet been a tournament when he strung four solid rounds together. That changed in a big way this week. He was lights out both Friday and Saturday – shooting matching 64’s and needing only 20 putts on Saturday – and seemed to continue that run early Sunday, as he was 4-under through seven holes. McDowell bogeyed No. 9 and made seven-straight pars before birding the par-3 17th. It was a key two-shot swing, as Stroud made bogey. McDowell’s longtime caddie, Ken Comboy, said there had been signs McDowell was close to breaking out. McDowell said Comboy was the one who suggested there might be a couple shot swing in the final three holes at the Corales Golf Course, which were playing to a different wind than the first three days, and Comboy said he was happy to see it all come together this week for McDowell. The win Sunday was a culmination of a lot of hard work over a long period of time, he said. “It’s been coming; it’s just not come soon enough,â€� Comboy, who has been with McDowell for 13 years, told PGATOUR.com. “Every week we’ve been in with a shout we’ve kept messing it up and it’s just been really frustrating. He’s not walked away from a golf tournament in the last 12 months like he’s got anything out of it. It’s been a frustrating time for him.” “It’s just a question of keep doing it, keep doing it, and it will turn. This week is proof is does turn around.â€� McDowell is still hoping for another TOUR win to come when he can celebrate by having his three kids run on to the green, but he enjoyed a call with his youngest after the trophy ceremony. “He said, ‘Daddy won,’â€� said McDowell with a small break in his voice. “He’s obviously got no concept what just happened, but that is the visual, that is my dream is to win with my kids there.â€� Last year McDowell came to Punta Cana to try to earn some valuable FedExCup points and left with nothing but the taste of Dominican rum on his breath, he said. This year, the only rum he’ll be drinking will be in celebration. “It’s relief right now, but this will not only be kind of a satisfying win, but it will be a springboard win as well,â€� said McDowell. “At some point I was going to get tired of messing up, and this week I got tired messing up.â€�

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