Koepka’s only real competition for Player of the Year is his female counterpart, Jin Young Ko. She is also the World No. 1. She won four times on the LPGA Tour in the 2019 season—and bagged two majors to BK’s one.
What did Koepka do that Ko didn’t? He led an all-out assault on one of the game’s biggest issues: slow play. Koepka’s wins, he asserted, gave him a louder voice with which to speak up, and he aggressively addressed the sluggish pace of his fellow pros. First, in January, at SiriusXM’s New York headquarters: “A lot of [the slower pros] are the very good players, too, which is part of the problem.” Then, in July, at Royal Portrush, he played the final round with notorious slowpoke J.B. Holmes. On the back nine, Koepka tapped his wrist in the direction of rules officials, in an attempt to say, “C’mon already!” A month later, at the Northern Trust, a confrontation between Brooks and Bryson DeChambeau led them both to call into a radio show and discuss the topic at length. Koepka may not be a reverential custodian of the traditions of the game, but he’s doing his best to nudge the sport into a faster future. Somewhere in the middle of all that, he represented golf at the ESPY Awards. No golfer made more headlines in 2019.
When the PGA Tour Player of the Year votes were tallied, Koepka’s peers gave the nod to McIlroy’s season—or was it to McIlroy’s demeanor? Koepka has proudly and nonchalantly made this mind-numbingly difficult sport look easy. He even cockily reminded us of it in his press conferences. He didn’t practice between events this year, he said. Because his left knee was a nagging pain, he didn’t grind during normal Tour events when he didn’t have to.
It’s scary to think what might happen when he does. But we’ll save that for December 2020, when I’m here lobbying for him again. Koepka ended his 2019 season with a couple of comments intended to bite into the McIlroy for POTY campaign: “I’ve been out here for, what, five years?” he said. “Rory hasn’t won a major since I’ve been on the PGA Tour.” It was a perfect reminder of whose accomplishments we’ll actually remember from 2019.
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