Brooks Koepka’s PGA Championship win is confirmation that he’s back

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Brooks Koepka pulled slowly into the Oak Hill Country Club parking lot at 1:10 p.m. Sunday, arriving exactly one minute after Viktor Hovland, his partner in a 2:30 tee time. Koepka leaned to his right, an elbow atop the center console, and draped his left wrist over the steering wheel of his courtesy SUV. He pulled into a personalized parking spot with signage honoring his 2018 and ’19 PGA Championship wins. He backed up, straightened her out, pulled forward, and put it in park.

Then Koepka walked the way Koepka walks. Impossibly unhurried. Shoulders pressed back. It’s like he’s never wanted the world to think he’s trying to get anywhere.

For a long time, this walk from Koepka framed so many championship Sundays. He was the one everyone was waiting for. He was the last to arrive. He was the one greeted by a backpedaling camera guy who captured every step as the broadcast cut to a live shot of The Man coming upon the scene.

In recent years, though? We kind of got used to not seeing him.

Sunday’s round with Hovland began in front of a massive gallery, just like the old days. Koepka hit his opening tee shot and there it was, more of that walk. After an opening par, Koepka birdied the second hole, pulled the ball out of the cup and took about 30 full seconds to walk off the green. His tee shot on No. 3 was followed by a stroll pulled straight from a John Woo film.

As he has done for most of his professional career, Koepka did exactly what he wanted Sunday. A glacial front nine produced a 1-under 34. A heated back nine seeing him and Hovland trading blows, competition boiling, sped things up. Koepka’s gait moved him across the land, in control, those shoulders pushed back even further. A 2-under 33 made for a 3-under 67 and, like that, a new sign for the parking space.

Koepka was the 2023 PGA Champion.

Everything that happened at Oak Hill this weekend occurred according to Koepka’s schedule. It’s been a while since he could say that and, in some ways, it felt appropriate for a player whose road back from near-oblivion rarely went as planned. At the darkest times, it seemed his playing days might befall an end known by an unfortunate company of injured greats. Such a fate would’ve been cruel. He is, without question, one of the finest players in modern golf history. This victory in Rochester makes him just the third golfer to reach five major victories in the 21st century. The others are Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, two others who know what it looks like to go to the brink and back.

After winning four majors in 2018 and ’19, Koepka tore his patella tendon in August 2019 and sustained a hip injury in 2020. Then, in March 2021, a gruesome injury. A slip and fall at home left Koepka on the ground with a dislocated knee. He tried to put the knee back in place, but instead shattered his kneecap and tore his medial patellofemoral ligament, leaving his knee and foot pointing in different directions. A…