Smylie Kaufman believes that Brooks Koepka has a real chance to win on the PGA Tour before The Masters following his performance at the Cognizant Classic this past week.
Brooks Koepka registered his first top 10 on the PGA Tour since his return at PGA National. Koepka recovered from an opening 74 to finish tied for ninth in Florida.
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It was particularly encouraging to see rounds of 66 and 65 from the five-time major champion, though Koepka will not be in the field for the Arnold Palmer Invitational this week.
Nevertheless, Smylie Kaufman believes that everything is starting to come together for Koepka – and may soon lead to him getting across the line ahead of The Masters.
Smylie Kaufman thinks Brooks Koepka could win on the PGA Tour before The Masters
Koepka had been struggling with his putter for much of the early part of the season. However, there have certainly been flashes of his brilliance since he made the decision to leave LIV Golf.
And speaking on The Smylie Show following the final round at the Cognizant Classic, Kaufman explained why he could see Koepka winning again on the PGA Tour in the very near future.
“He made over 100 feet of putts on Friday morning. Finally, I think he made four putts outside of 20 feet on Friday morning. That’s kind of the round that he needed, just to see the ball finally go in. Just have a day in which the putter was giving him life,” he said.
“When you can’t make anything inside of 10 feet, you just feel hopeless out there. It doesn’t matter how good you hit it. So when you combine what we’ve seen through this entire stretch, I feel very confident heading into The Players Championship that Brooks could, I don’t know if win is the right word, but I think he is closer to putting it all together than he is to missing multiple cuts coming up. I think he’s closer to finding himself around the mix at some of these events coming up.
“With Brooks, it doesn’t take much. As soon as he feels healthy, it’s coming out the right windows for him. If you have a hot putter, I tell you what, it opens up the rest of your game to feeling like you don’t have to play quite as aggressively with your irons. And I bet he felt that earlier in the year, feeling like, ‘I’ve got to aim at these flags. The closer I hit it, the better chance I have of making birdie’. Of course, that makes sense, but it sure would be nice to hit it to the middle of the green sometimes on these holes and not get short-sided and walk away with some bonus birdies.
“I feel great about Brooks. We’ve got a fun stretch with the Florida swing, and then some events in Texas. He could play four in a row from Players to Valspar, Houston and San Antonio. He’s probably going to be taking off an event somewhere in there, maybe at San Antonio, might be the one he might take off. I wouldn’t put it past him to win before Augusta. I really think that he could win, I 100 per cent think he could win.
“Houston [most likely], he’s the co-designer, right, he’s got to know some secrets.”
How Brooks Koepka has performed at the Houston Open since helping redesign Memorial Park
As Kaufman notes, Koepka had a hand in the redesign of Memorial Park, the home of the Texas Children’s Houston Open.
The golf course returned to the PGA Tour schedule in October 2020 having not hosted the Houston Open since 1963.
The most recent renovation involved Koepka acting as a consultant to Tom Doak. And speaking ahead of the first event back in 2020, Koepka explained how he found the process of helping design a PGA Tour venue.
“To be honest with you, I had no aspirations of ever being like I want to design golf courses, nothing, but then being asked to do this, it’s a really cool idea,” he said, as reported by the PGA Tour website.
“I think any time you can play a hand in having some opinion on a course that we’re going to play out here, I think it’s unique, it doesn’t happen very often. And it’s been cool just to see it evolve. I know this golf course is quite difficult. It’s quite long. You’ll see some high numbers, especially if the wind gets up. It kind of resembles a little bit of a US Open. I think some people would say, which I feel like I’ve done pretty good at.”
Koepka went on to finish tied for fifth that week. But he found the going much tougher the following year as he missed the cut after reaching the halfway stage at three over par.
It would clearly be a big shock to many if he failed to make the weekend this time around given the direction his game appears to be trending in.
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