Brooks Koepka makes baffling (?!) LIV Golf admission: "It meant the most to me"
Brooks Koepka says he was more nervous attempting to capture his first LIV Golf win than any of his previous five major championship victories.
Cast your mind back to October 2022 and Brooks Koepka was feeling the heat.
He was playing in LIV Golf's seventh event of their debut season in Jeddah, Saudia Arabia.
Turns out, the temperature wasn't the problem for Koepka. He was simply desperate to get back into the winner's circle.
He had not tasted victory in any event since the 2021 Waste Management Phoenix Open.
A serious knee injury led Koepka to the assumption that perhaps his career was going to come to a premature end.
Sure, he could look back fondly on the four major championship he had already won, plus multiple PGA Tour titles.
But a player of his calibre not ever winning the Masters? Unthinkable to Koepka.
Afterall, this was a man who once claimed he could match Tiger Woods' haul of 15 major wins.
Koepka ended up winning the LIV event in Jeddah after a playoff victory over Peter Uihlein.
According to the man himself, it was the most nervous he had ever been. In any event he has ever played.
Koepka told GOLF why: "Because it meant the most to me, and I was trying to finish off the event, it was the LIV event in Saudi Arabia
"Just because I finally felt like I was back. I hadn't won. I hadn't played that well, but like, I knew I was starting to come back and I could see the progression that was going on even while the scores weren't exactly there.
"And then, that meant the most to me just because I'm like, OK, finally I can do this again.
"There weren't many fans or anything around, but just the pressure that I had like, internally, was was greater than anything else."
Of course, Koepka has since captured his fifth major. He was also part of the 2023 U.S. Ryder Cup team.
Koepka opened up on his injury woes in the Netflix documentary Full Swing.
He also revealed the gruesome extent of his knee injury before the 2023 Masters.
Koepka fell at home - shortly after the 21 Phoenix Open - and attempted to snap his knee back into place himself.
That led to him shattering his kneecap.
Koepka told reporters he went under the knife three weeks before the 2021 Masters and played anyway despite doctors urging him not to.
He was told that the recovery period was likely going to be around a year and a half.
Koepka was operated on by Dr. Neal ElAttrache. Koepka hand-picked the surgeon. "He did a hell of a job," Koepka previously said.
The golfer now appears to be a picture of health in LIV's third season.
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