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Brooks Koepka is making his 2019-20 PGA Tour season debut this week at the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open and during his Wednesday press conference, he revealed for the first time that he played through injury last season.
Koepka told the media that he played with a partially torn patella tendon and had treatment done following the Tour Championship. The world’s No. 1 golfer won three events last year including his second straight PGA Championship and his worst finish in a major was T-4 at The Open. That’s not too bad of a resume for a guy that played with a torn-up knee.
“I had some stem cell done on my knee. My patella tendon was partially torn, so just rehabbing that. Spent the first probably three, four weeks just rehabbing that and been back hitting balls…I was watching it on the screen as they were doing it and it was probably one of the most painful things. I was screaming when they did it.”
While the injury was big-time news, it wasn’t the quote that stood out or most ‘Brooks Koepka thing’ about his time with the media on Wednesday. He was sure to remind everyone that he didn’t practice at all last year, but now he’s able to.
“I can finally practice again, which is nice, without pain. Last year I didn’t practice at all. I mean, I vocalized that, said I hadn’t practiced. I finally feel this year I can practice again. I think people forget, too, I also had a wrist injury. I was just coming back off that. I still don’t know — I’ve only got so many shots left.”
Talk about a flex. Koepka spent all of last season not only vaporizing the golf ball but nearly entire fields in all four majors, not to mention a dominant win at the WGC event in Memphis without practicing. He’s just got it like that and has kept it no secret that he gets bored out on the golf course.
His quote about practicing sends a big message to the rest of the golfing world. He’s got every ounce of confidence he needs and now he gets to practice, it almost sounds unfair for everyone else.
Koepka is set to play alongside Adam Scott and Gary Woodland in the first two rounds of the Shriners this week in Vegas. He finished second at the event back in 2017.