Brooks Koepka, Michael Block and frost: How we'll remember a spectacular PGA Championship

There is a brick wall on the back side of the Oak Hill Country Club clubhouse that prominently displays the names of those who have won the major tournaments at one of America’s most prominent courses.

It includes the likes of all-time greats such as Cary Middlecoff, and Lee Trevino, and Jack Nicklaus, and Curtis Strange, and Jay Haas, and yes, the European Ryder Cup. And now, it will include Brooks Koepka who has become one of the greatest major championship competitors of this era.

He’s probably not going to match Nicklaus who won a record 18 majors - not even Tiger Woods could do that. But after winning the PGA Championship on the beefed up East Course with a superb final-round of 67 that gave him a 72-hole score of 9-under-par 271, he now has five majors.

What does five mean? Well, he is one of only 20 men in the history of a game that has been played for more than a century and a half to do that. Yes, 20..

Simply incredible, and yes, his name will fit fabulously on that Wall of Fame.

“Yeah, it’s crazy,” he said Sunday night. “I try not to think of it right now. I mean, I do care about it. It’s just tough to really grasp the situation kind of while you’re still in it, I think. When I’m retired and I can look back with Jena and my son and kind of reflect on all that stuff, that will be truly special, but right now I’m trying to collect as many of these things as I can. We’ll see how it goes.”

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Koepka put on a memorable performance, yet he was only a part of a fantastic week at a club that hosts major championships like no other, in a community that loves and supports golf like no other.

Here are some of the other things that we will remember from the 2023 PGA Championship:

PGA club pro Michael Block was a blast

There was no one - and I repeat no one, maybe not even Koepka - who enjoyed himself more than Block, one of 20 PGA of America club pros who qualified to play in the tournament.

The PGA Championship is the only major comprised 100% of pros. There are the world famous pros of the PGA Tour and other tours, and then there are the club pros who qualify based on their finish in the national club pro championship. The other majors all have a certain number of amateurs in the field, meaning the PGA always has the deepest and strongest field.

Block was the only club pro to make the cut, and not only that, he played Sunday in the fourth-to-last twosome with Rory McIlroy. Talk about heady stuff. He shot three straight 70s to get there, and then it only got more surreal on Sunday.

Block continued to hang in there, going stroke for stroke with McIlroy, and then he set Oak Hill ablaze when he made a hole-in-one at the 15th hole, the ball flying straight into the cup. It was the shot of the tournament, and if the head pro at Arroyo Trabuco Golf Club in Mission Viejo, California wasn’t already the most popular player on the course, or in Rochester, or in the golf world, he was then.

“This week’s been absolutely a dream,” he said. “I didn’t know it was going to happen, but I knew if I just played my darned game right, that I could do this. I always knew it.”

Of course, in his dreams, he was doing this going head to head with Tiger Woods. But Rory McIlroy was a perfectly suitable substitute.

“I always saw myself coming down the stretch with Tiger Woods,” he said with that smile that we saw all week. “I was like, ‘I’m going to do it, even if I’m 45 or whatever it is, I’m going to come down the stretch at an event with Tiger.’

“It just happened to be that I was in the 2023 PGA Championship at Oak Hill, and I had Rory McIlroy in my group. I wasn’t coming down the stretch to win, but at the same time, Sunday at a major with the crowd here at Rochester was unreal.”

Masters champion Jon Rahm spent some time with CBS after his round concluded Sunday, and he was told that Block had said because he’s so busy teaching at his club, he only hits about one bucket of balls per week to practice. “And how many is he beating me by,” Rahm said. Rahm is a good dude and I wish he had contended here, but his first-round 76 killed him.

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It never fails: Weather is always an issue

I’ve covered every major event at Oak Hill since the 1989 U.S. Open - that’s eight if you’re counting at home - and all have been impacted by weather in one way or another. Really, if it’s a big event at Oak Hill, you just know going into it that Mother Nature is going to make her presence felt.

Early in the week, though it was chilly in the morning, the practice rounds went off beautifully, but Thursday’s first round was delayed nearly two hours because of frost and the round couldn’t be completed.

And then Saturday’s third round, it had to be pretty a miserable experience if you were out there as it rained for almost the entire day. I felt bad for those who had tickets for only Saturday because that couldn’t have been too much fun battling the weather and the huge crowds.

However, no one should lament the fact that the PGA of America moved the PGA Championship to August because let’s remember, it rains in August, too. It’s Rochester. It can rain at any time of the year, even in the winter.

The renovated East Course was sublime

I really didn’t think it was possible to make Oak Hill’s championship course better, but architect Andrew Green and all that were responsible for the massive makeover certainly succeeded, and almost every player who was asked to comment agreed.

Phil Mickelson, who had a very tough week shooting 10-over 290, certainly wasn’t bitter and he summed up the course best. “It’s just a good, hard, fair test,” said the winner of six major championships. “I think it’s an incredible test. It’s just a great golf course and a great place to play. I really enjoy it.”

These are the best players in the world and by week’s end there were only 11 who finished under par. Through three rounds there were only 50 rounds of 69 or better, the lowest number of sub-par rounds posted through round three of a PGA Championship since 2008 at Oakland Hills (23).

Even with improved conditions for scoring Sunday which saw 28 players shoot in the 60s, the course more than held its own.

As of now the next major event scheduled here is the 2027 U.S. Amateur. But it seems almost impossible that the PGA of America wouldn’t get a new contract signed with Oak Hill for another PGA Championship in the next decade. They’ve been here in 2003, 2013, and 2023. Is this a trend for 2033? It should be, May dates be damned.

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Tom Kim’s dive into Allen’s Creek

The South Korean has raised a lot of eyebrows because he turned pro when he was just 16 years old in 2018 and by 2021-22 he was the leading money winner on the Asian Tour, he finished third at the 2022 Scottish Open, and then tied for 47th in the 2022 British Open.

That gained him status on the PGA Tour, and when he won the 2022 Wyndham Championship in Greensboro - the first player born after 2000 to win a Tour event - he earned full exempt status and is now considered a future star.

Unfortunately for Kim, his play is not what we will remember as he shot 8-over 148 and missed the cut. Very late on Thursday, Kim hit his ball into Allen’s Creek to the right of the sixth fairway. That hole was a nightmare for every player in the field, but it was worse for him. He tried to find the ball, slipped, and fell into the muck and mud and water.

“It was just in the mud over there, and if I was able to find it and I had a good enough lie I was thinking I could chip it over there,” he told ESPN on its broadcast. It’s a major championship. I’m fighting for every single stroke I have.”

The shot of him covered in the mud and then trying to wash it off was priceless. To his credit he regrouped and saved a bogey.

More: Tom Kim gets covered waist-deep in mud, bathes in creek at PGA Championship

Things were definitely a bit pricey

Well, that’s a sign of the times, right? Tickets for the event were substantially more expensive than 2013, though that certainly didn’t seem to faze anyone. These were the largest crowds we’ve ever seen at Oak Hill, mainly because there is so much more room to move around the property with so many trees gone.

I can’t even imagine how much the merchandise tent made in sales. I know I dropped some money in there this week and I can tell you, it was costly.

Food and beverage were also ridiculous, but hey, they’ve got you on a golf course, and if you left the course, you couldn’t return. If you’re hungry or thirsty, you have no choice.

One fan caught a nice break, though. Joel Dahmen hit a wayward shot during a practice round that hit a spectator. After making sure the person was OK, Dahmen handed over a $100 bill and said, “I got your beers today.” Whatever pain felt, that was worth it.

It was all worth it. It was a spectacular week at Oak Hill, and it sure seemed like a good time was had by all.

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Sal Maiorana can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @salmaiorana.To subscribe to Sal's newsletter, Bills Blast, which will come out every Friday during the offseason, please follow this link: https://profile.democratandchronicle.com/newsletters/bills-blast

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Rochester starred on the big stage with spectacular PGA Championship