Koepka doesn't know what's next

He doesn't squash rumors of possible life after LIV; Players playoff: Rory vs. J.J.

Brooks Koepka seems amused everyone else knows what he doesn’t (Mike Stobe/LIV Golf)

Brooks Koepka was never going to confirm that he is looking to return to the PGA Tour. He was never going to say anything derogative about LIV Golf, where he signed for more than $100 million in 2022 and has a contract believed to extend through 2026.

But Koepka made headlines in Singapore nonetheless.

The five-time major champion who finished second to Joaquin Niemann on Sunday at the LIV Golf Singapore event didn’t exactly put an emphatic end to a story involving Fred Couples.

The former Masters champion said he was in touch with Koepka and was under the impression that Koepka wanted back on the PGA Tour. The created a brief dust-up with Phil Mickelson on social media (which Mickelson later deleted) and brought on questions for Koepka.

“I’ve got a contract obligation out here to fulfill, and then we’ll see what happens,” Koepka said at a news conference in Singapore on Wednesday. “I don’t know where I’m going, so I don’t know how everybody else does.”

Earlier this month, Couples, 65, had told a Seattle radio station that “Koepka really wants to come back.”

“Fred texted me after, I guess, the comments came out,” Koepka said. “I don’t know when it was, sometime last week. Yeah, everybody seems to have their own opinion, and no one asks me. I talk to Fred quite a bit, but we don’t go too much into detail about what’s going on.”

All of this came amid the on-going, lingering, sometimes aggravating negotiations between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, LIV’s financial backer. Part of that is undoubtedly discussion about how LIV players might again play on the PGA Tour.

But the saga is far from over, as PGA Tour player and policy board member Adam Scott said last week.

“We’re starting from two different sides of this, so I think it’s hard to find the balance that’s acceptable for everybody,” Scott said. “And it also may not be ultimately possible.”

Koepka is the captain of LIV’s Smash team. He won twice last year on LIV Golf.

“Right now, I’m just focused on how do I play better, how do I play better in the majors, how does this team win, and then we’ll figure out next year and how to play better again,” Koepka said. “It’s the same thing. It’s just a revolving cycle. I’ve got nothing. Everybody else seems to know more than I do.”

LIV Golf has now played four events in 2024, with Adrian Meronk winning the first in Riyadh followed by Niemann winning in Adelaide, Sergio Garcia in Hong Kong and Niemann again on Sunday by five shots in Singapore.

After a two-week break, LIV Golf plays its first domestic event in Miami, April 4-6, a week prior to the Masters. There are currently 12 LIV players qualified for the Masters.

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J.J. Spaun came 4 inches short of beating Rory McIlroy in regulation (David Rosenblum/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Spaun pushes McIlroy to overtime at Players

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FL — Rory McIlroy couldn’t close the door on a three-shot lead with five holes to play on Sunday. Now he’ll wake up to face a three-hole aggregate playoff Monday morning against dogged underdog J.J. Spaun with the Players Championship on the line.

McIlroy played the final five holes in 1-over, making a bogey on 14 and missing birdie chances from under 6 feet on 15 and 12 feet on the par-5 16th to open the door for Spaun to catch him with kick-in birdies at 14 and 16. McIlroy’s 68 and Spaun’s 72 left both players at 12-under, two shots ahead of Tom Hoge, Akshay Bhatia and Lucas Glover at TPC Sawgrass.

They’ll return to the Stadium course at 9 a.m. to play the volatile loop of 16, 17 and 18 for an aggregate score playoff. If they’re still tied after three holes, they’ll go back to the island par-3 17th hole and play it repeatedly until someone wins.

“I’ll get a good night’s sleep and reset and try to win it tomorrow,” McIlroy said. “I think it’s important to hit the 16th fairway (in the morning) and get off to a good start there and then just go from there. You’ve got to make five good swings. That’s all it is. So try to get up there, make five good swings tomorrow morning and get this thing done.”

It was a long Sunday that started for the remaining combatants before 10 am local time and ended about 9½ hours later before sunset due to a four-hour weather suspension after the turn.

McIlroy turned a four-shot deficit to Spaun at the start into a three-shot lead within minutes after the resumption of play when McIlroy birdied the 12th and Spaun three-putted for bogey on the 11th. From there it just slipped from McIlroy’s clutches.

“The whole day was a bit of a battle,” said McIlroy. “Standing here feeling like I probably should be going home with the trophy tonight.”

It was Spaun, in fact, who very nearly stole the trophy down the stretch in regulation after his bogey right out of the four-hour layoff triggered him. He stuffed it stone dead for birdie on the difficult 14th. His pitch from a similar spot to where McIlroy was left of the par-5 16th green nearly fell for eagle and his 30-foot birdie putt on the last pulled up 4 inches short in the heart of the cup.

“Once that bogey kind of hit me, I just tried to just fight back,” said Spaun, a one-time PGA Tour winner who has had climbed to No. 57 in the world with a pair of high finishes this season. “I kind of went with the odds. I had nothing to lose. Now I’m trying to catch Rory, and I can’t really control what he does. But I can control what I do, and I just started committing to my shots and my swing and trusting it more. Because it’s easy to – now when I’m hunting, it’s easier to let it go. Whereas, starting the round I was a little tentative, a little scared and stuff.”

McIlroy — a 27-time PGA Tour winner including four majors with 10 more victories on the DP World Tour — was anything but tentative at the start. He certainly seemed likely to add his name again to the Players trophy he won in 2019. With the strongest pedigree on a pretty unheralded leaderboard, he quickly made himself the one to watch by charging out of the gate with a birdie and eagle from short distance on the first two holes.

He got unlucky when his drive on the seventh settled in a divot and he pulled his subsequent wedge into a brutal spot to try to save par from a bunker and made bogey to fall out of the three-way lead with Bhatia and Spaun. But a bounce-back birdie on the par-3 eighth and another on 11 pushed McIlroy to 12-under, one ahead of Spaun when the horn blew to suspend play as a series of thunderstorm cells rolled through.

“I’m happy to be in the position that I am, but also I feel like I had chances there on the back nine to close the door, and I didn’t quite do that,” McIlroy said.

On paper, the playoff looks like a mismatch, but as McIlroy has proved through the years that nothing is as easy as it seems in golf. Especially on the big stages.

“I’d like to think that I can fall back on my experience and maybe have a little bit more than J.J.,” he said. “But then at the same time, tomorrow is all just about execution and getting up there and, as I said, making five good swings.”

As Spaun proved on Sunday, the 34-year-old won’t yield.

“I showed myself that I don’t have to shy away from the moment,” Spaun said. “I think in the past I’ve done that, just kind of been afraid of being in that spotlight, being in that pressure, being worried about failure. But it’s hard to win, and you have to fail multiple times in order to win. That’s kind of what I’ve learned throughout my career, and it paid off today.”

McIlroy has suffered his share of heartbreaks on big stages, so he has his own demons to overcome when they reach the 16th tee in the morning. Spaun believes the pressure is on the favorite.

“I mean, everyone expects him to win. I don’t think a lot of people expect me to win,” Spaun said. “I expect myself to win. That’s all I care about.”