Sunday, May 26, 2019
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Jonah Karzmer
Thank you, Brooks Koepka. Your dominance at last week’s PGA Championship finally gave me a correct pick in the paper! The bogeys on the back nine made me a little nervous. And made you look human. But in the end, you got it done!
I like Brooks Koepka. I thought his pre-tournament press conference last week was one of the most confident and impressive insights into the mind of a man ready to dominate his sport.
But one thing I wanted to address is the commanding advantage a player like Brooks has when our governing bodies set up major championships like Bethpage was last week: He hits the ball very far.
Bethpage was a wet, cold and fairly wide 7,400-yard golf course. The rough was penal. But with that setup, there should be no surprise that Brooks and fellow bomber Dustin Johnson finished the weekend 1-2.
This obvious finish was exemplified to me when I watched the leaders play the ninth hole on Sunday. At 460 yards, the ninth was a tough, dogleg left, uphill par-4. With a bunker hugging the left corner of the fairway, the shorter players had to play further right, leaving a longer second shot into the green.
First through was Dustin Johnson. Two-under on the round, he was moving up the leaderboard and playing aggressively. On nine, he ripped a driver 309 yards. Cut the corner. And hit a controlled lower iron from 158 yards to a tap-in birdie.
Next through was Jazz Janewattananond. Outside of just wanting to write that name in my column, I felt connected to him when I watched him play the ninth in a manner much more like my own game. He hit a solid drive 278 yards but took a safer line to the right. His second shot up the hill from 210 yards was a lower ripped 3-iron that skipped through the rough short, and ended up on the green, where he two putted for par.
And finally Koepka. With a commanding lead, Koepka was able to take on the fairway bunker and ripped his tee shot 280, but more up the center of the fairway. His resulting 185-yard shot easily carried safely on the green where he two-putted for par.
Three players. Three different way of playing the hole. Two pars and one birdie. The takeaway for me however was how that single hole proved just how difficult it would be for someone like Jazz to actually win a major with a setup like Bethpage. Sure, for that hole, he was able to tie Brooks with a par. But Janewattananond’s par was way harder than Koepka’s. And he had almost no chance of knocking it stiff like Johnson did.
Sure there are par-3s, shorter par-4s, and reachable par-5s. But out of last week’s 72 holes, I would guess 25-35 of them were played with a setup similar to the ninth hole example above. Can Jazz make the same score as those two on any one hole? Of course. But is he at a distinct disadvantage over 25, 30, 35 holes like that? Certainly.
I don’t know enough about the “behind the scenes” analytics the Tour goes through to measure the overall success of an event. I’m guessing the superstar victories of Tiger at The Masters and now Koepka’s back-to-back PGA Championships are welcomed by the Tour.
But if we want to start seeing major championships that can be won by more than 20ish players, we’re going to need to see some major changes in golf course setups. I’ll cover those ideas in a few weeks when we address next month’s U.S. Open at Pebble Beach.
Until then, thanks again, Brooks!
Jonah Karzmer is a former golf professional who writes a Sunday golf column for The Vindicator. In his spare time he sells commercial insurance and loves getting feedback on his weekly columns via email at Jonah@thekarzmerinsurance.com.