Masters: Brooks Koepka goes from trying to smash a car window to smashing the field at Augusta

AUGUSTA, Ga. — One year ago Brooks Koepka had, once again, missed the cut at the Masters.

His knee continued to ache from a 2021 dislocation, cap shattering and medial patellofemoral ligament tear. His rehab seemed hopeless, a series of downs with only the occasional up.

The sorry state of his game, he acknowledges now, made it easier for him, months later, to join LIV Golf. He had previously dismissed such a thing as “selling out.” Grabbing the guaranteed money made sense, though, when he couldn’t guarantee he’d ever return to the form that won him four majors from 2017-2019.

Sitting in a courtesy car outside the Augusta National clubhouse in April of 2022, he continued to consider quitting golf, not just professionally, but altogether. “I probably would have picked [the clubs] up occasionally, a couple times a year, but that would have been about it,” he said.

So it all boiled over.

“I tried to break the back window with my fist,” he said. “... I tried to put it through the back window, not once but twice. First time didn't go, so I figured: try it again.”

The window survived.

“I guess Mercedes makes a pretty good back window,” Keopka joked.

Koepka is a different man these days; different golfer, too. He’s healthy. He’s happy. He just started this Masters 65-67.

Forget about missing the cut for the third consecutive year. At 12-under, he sits three shots clear of the field with second-round play suspended until Saturday. Koepka is in serious control of this event and looking every bit the peak-Koepka who dominated the majors for a few years there.

He can joke about how bad it was, even if he worried about sharing too much.

“I don't even know if I should be saying this,” he said of his one-sided fist fight with the car window.

Say more of it, actually.

Brooks Koepka is back, not just lighting up the scoreboard but as an entertaining if occasionally enraging personality. His mood here has been confident and charismatic, blowing through the tournament and daring any and all comers to stay close. None have. Amateur Sam Bennett is in second place, four strokes back, as weather delays plagued play Friday afternoon and loom over Saturday.

Koepka has returned to being fun to watch and, for some fans at least, listen to. Like him or hate him, he’s a jolt of character in a sport that needs it. This isn’t just brooding Brooks. Lacking the game to back up his talk, and no doubt hurting non-stop — “20 minutes just to get out of bed” — he wasn’t in the mood for much.

Now he looks again like the dominating force he was. Now it is all coming together, his game sharpened and the Masters offering the big platform and top-line competition that LIV can’t. Always a spotlight kind of player, he welcomes both.

“It's just competitively where you miss playing against them, right?” Koepka said of not being around the great players on the PGA Tour. “Because you want Rory [McIlroy] to play his best and Scottie [Scheffler] to play his best and Jon [Rahm] to play his best and go toe-to-toe with them. I do miss that. That's one thing that I do miss, and that's what I think makes these majors so cool.”

He said he is happy with his decision to leave the PGA for LIV, but it seems fair to wonder if there is some regret. Unlike other LIV golfers here, he isn’t wearing his LIV team logo on his shirt, explaining only that he “is sponsored by Nike.”

Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s something. Maybe the PGA Tour tweeting out a picture of him and his Friday score was nothing. Or maybe it was something.

Time will tell but in the meantime, the LIV-PGA division only makes the four weeks a year for major tournaments even more important to Koepka.

He’s long geared his game for the majors. He won just eight times in his PGA career — but half of them came at the U.S. Open and PGA Championships. Now he’s going for major No. 5, and his first at the Masters, which would put him in a group of just 20 all-time.

At just 32, if his body and game are rebuilt, there is no reason he can’t keep climbing. Or put it this way, Brooks Koepka certainly thinks he can win every major he enters. He expects it even.

“The whole goal is to win the Grand Slam, right?” he said. “I feel like all the greats have won here and they have all won British Opens as well. Look, I guess it's one more box for me to tick to truly feel like I've done what I should have accomplished in this game.”

Friday was a step in that direction. Four more birdies. One eagle. Just 29 putts, after just 28 the day before. He had little trouble. His game looks pristine.

“Really solid,” he said. “Didn't really do too much wrong.”

Car windows are safe. The Masters field, less so.