FARMINGDALE, N.Y. – It wasn’t long ago that Brooks Koepka was merely the lovable sidekick, the harmless challenger to Dustin Johnson’s throne. They played golf together. They lifted weights together. They boated and fished and vacationed together. But a viable threat to his supremacy? Oh, no. Unlikely.
And yet there was Johnson, in the scoring tent at Bethpage Black, glancing up at a TV monitor as Koepka closed in on another major, on the verge of eclipsing him even further.
In a 25-mph wind, on a brutish course that turned wayward drives into hack-outs, Johnson had played majestically for 15 holes, slicing into Koepka’s massive advantage and trailing by only one as he stood over his 194-yard approach into the 16th green.