Brooks Koepka reflects on a “pretty bad” year

Brooks Koepka has delivered a withering assessment of his year, saying that if he was to assess it honestly, he would pay for it – literally.

Koepka, 30, is in the field for this week’s Mayakoba Classic in Mexico, the last full field PGA Tour event of 2020.

The four-time major champion started the year as No.1 on the Official World Golf Ranking but, after an injury-hit 12 months, he finds himself in 12th place on the standings.

Koepka has made only 14 starts on the PGA Tour in 2020 but has as many top-10s (four) as missed cuts.

Two of those top-10s have come in his two most recent starts – most recently a tie for seventh at the Masters – but he’s refusing to let that paper over the cracks of his year.

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Asked to sum up his season ahead of this week’s tournament, he said: “I don’t know if I could say that without getting fined. Pretty bad.

“From the moment I got hurt until I pulled out or, what was it, I guess when I started back in Vegas, I was pretty pleased. From that point forward or going back to when I got hurt I just think of that as whatever. I don’t think about it, it’s just one of those things, just trying to fight through it. My body wouldn’t let me do things that I wanted to do, so I don’t put too much weight on it.

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“It’s not been the year I wanted, but just got to move on and keep pushing through.”

Reflecting on his week’s work at Augusta National last month, he added he was disappointed not to win his fifth major but was full of praise for the eventual champion, Dustin Johnson.

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“I don’t think anybody was going to catch DJ,” added Koepka. “He played pretty good. It was kind of coming. I think we all knew that he was going to win more than one major, and the run he had from Travelers until Augusta was pretty impressive. That stretch of golf will probably go down for one of the best maybe six months we’ve seen in a long time.

“But Augusta just, I wasn’t pleased with it, but I guess I get to go back next year.”