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SENTRY TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONSJanuary 2, 2019Brooks KoepkaKapalua, Maui, Hawaii RACHEL NOBLE: We'd like to welcome 2018 Player of the Year, Brooks Koepka, to the 2019 Sentry Tournament of Champions media center. Welcome Brooks. You captured two major victories last year and you just are coming off a win at the CJ Cup at Nine Bridges. What's it like to be here for your third time. BROOKS KOEPKA: Yeah, it's always nice. Any time you can come here, it's always a treat and it's always fun. It's a good place to start off the year and kind of get a feel and see how things are going. Obviously excited to build on the year I had last year and looking forward to it. RACHEL NOBLE: We'll open it up to questions, please. Q. Obviously being healthy compared to this time last year is the biggest difference but does it feel different otherwise or is it just a matter of being healthy and a little bit more prepared to start the season? BROOKS KOEPKA: I'm as prepared as I was last year, but I really haven't touched a club. Took some time off. But I'll need to practice every day to play my best. I would rather be mentally fresh than playing great and mentally tired. I feel like it's in a good spot right now. I like where I'm hitting it. But it's nice to be healthy and kind of get, fall back in love with the game a little bit and still excited to play every week and that's been the big difference. Q. Have you gone back, I assume you did your goals again or thoughts or whatever on the beach, did you go back and look at last year's list and can you give us an idea of how you did? BROOKS KOEPKA: I got about half of them last year. I mean it's like they're a bunch of random goals, like to be in bed by 10 o'clock every night. Q. Did you fail that one? BROOKS KOEPKA: No, I did good on that one. Every night. On the road. On the road. Q. On the road. BROOKS KOEPKA: On the road I was definitely in bed by 10. But obviously, stay healthy is always a big goal and obviously missing quite a few months there was disappointing. And to make every cut, didn't do that. Just little things like that. Q. Let me ask it this way: What is the one goal you hit that you're most proud of and the one that you missed that upsets you the most? BROOKS KOEPKA: To win multiple times. I think that was where I saw myself and how, what I should be doing, winning multiple times a year. To knock that off was nice. I felt really good about that. Obviously the big one is healthy. I failed there. But the one that really got me was missing a cut in Canada. Q. The one that you missed? BROOKS KOEPKA: Yeah, in Canada, that was a bit disappointing. I think that was the first one since Bay Hill a year ago. So I like playing the weekends. Q. Did you miss it big or little? BROOKS KOEPKA: I think I missed it by one or two. I don't know. It was quite, I wasn't happy on that plane ride home. I can tell you that much. Worked out a couple weeks later, though. It did. Q. People always maybe want to ask what do you do for an encore after you win two majors in a season, but an encore would mean that there was something over. But how do you build on last year? It was a really good year. BROOKS KOEPKA: Yeah, just keep that confidence high. I feel like I'm very confident with where the preparation I put in, the focus that I've had in tournaments and I feel like I've brought that over to regular PGA TOUR events. Where sometimes I kind of press a little too hard and instead of just playing that conservatively aggressive approach I have at the majors. Where I think it's starting to come around in regular TOUR events and don't feel like I have to push and have to win, just let it come sometimes. Q. What would be maybe one or two areas specifically of the game of golf where you say, yeah, I won two majors and three times and all that, but I really want to do X, Y, or Z better? BROOKS KOEPKA: I guess like as far as just my game or -- Q. Yes. BROOKS KOEPKA: Obviously wedge play. I feel like you can't be, you can never be too good at it until you start holing them out from everywhere. But I feel like if I really tone that in. Instead of hitting it to 15 feet, get it inside 10 on a bad shot or just an okay shot. Where I feel like that's something that you can always improve on. And then you start bringing the range out and instead of inside a hundred it's going, you're 125 to 150, things like that. That's been a big part. But short game's always trying to improve. You can never be too good at that. Q. When you left here last year was there any long-term concern about your wrist? Any, for lack of a better word, like fear like hey, what if this is a bigger deal than it was? BROOKS KOEPKA: Yeah. I was talking about that with my caddie today how last year Sunday was kind of it was weird. We were all kind of in the room and nobody really knew what, when I was going to play again, if I was going to be able to, because I already had I think two MRIs at that point and they both came up clean, but I knew something wasn't right. And then to get back and figure out what was going on was pretty scary. Guys basically it's the end of their career with the injury and it's not, the unknown isn't fun. To sit back and really hope to be able to play again and then, okay, well, am I still going to be able to do the things I do. I got that bowed wrist at the top and I couldn't even do that, just holding nothing I couldn't move my wrist in that direction. So just to be out playing was great and then to do what I did was kind of, it's kind of wild to think about it. Q. What's it going to take to win this week and do you think maybe the bigger hitters have a little bit of an advantage on this course? BROOKS KOEPKA: Definitely I think the big hitters get a little bit of an advantage. There's some little swales we can get down where we can get an extra 30 yards off the tee and then obviously that correlates into the whatever shot you got next. So being a bit long hitter definitely is an advantage. I think you got to be able to control your flight out here. You never know when these gusts are going to pop up. They can come from into off the right and all of a sudden just go slightly down and you could airmail a green pretty quickly. But you need to control your flight around here. The greens are big enough where you seem to if you can hit it in the right spot it will always kind of funnel back in and things like that. So the fairways are generous too, so we can kind of give it a whack and it shouldn't go too far off the fairway. Q. Given the new schedule, how difficult, if it was difficult at all, was it to come up with your schedule for this season? BROOKS KOEPKA: Not really. I still like the events that I play. Most of them are pretty much the same thing. I haven't switched it up too much. Obviously the timing of it might be a little different. I like to play the weeks before majors, big events, THE PLAYERS, things like that. And I think it actually kind of works in my advantage that way, having a good solid four months there of, you need to be dialed in on those four months with the majors and THE PLAYERS, I think that's extremely important. And to have it so close together, if you get on a hot run, you might be able to pop off all five. Q. Rory was saying there was stretch that he looked at to finish the season where he could potentially play nine of 10 weeks. I'm sure it was kind of similar when you looked through your schedule. Are you okay with that? BROOKS KOEPKA: That's fine. I try to plan my breaks out like accordingly in the season. Not try to play, try not to do four in a row, that's kind of my thing, I try to keep it at three. And we have looked at stats, I mean I usually play my best the second and third week out. That first week hasn't always been the best. But I need a little bit of rest. I need to get mentally fresh, come back out and then fire at it. But, yeah, you got to kind of take a little bit of find your breaks here and there and obviously that's going to be a big part of the season, FedExCup, all that. So you need to -- that goes into the planning and finding out golf courses you like, golf courses that kind of suit you and go from there. Q. Did you, have you done anything at Florida State since your two majors? Have you gone back to town, have you been feted? BROOKS KOEPKA: I've not gone back, no. I didn't want to go to a football game this year. Q. Have you been asked to do stuff that you wouldn't have ordinarily been asked to do had you not won the two? BROOKS KOEPKA: Yeah. Obviously I've been asked. I would have loved to have gone, I think it would have been cool. Q. Did they ask you at Florida State? BROOKS KOEPKA: Yeah, they did. They did but just coming back off injury, knowing I needed to play, get back into the FedExCup or really peak my game, it was kind of, I chose my job over going back. I mean I'm sure this year or this fall whatever, I'll be able to go back and go see everybody, go see coaches and just kind of go back to the old stomping grounds. It will be cool. I haven't been back in five, six years. Q. Has there been or would you expect any of those like wherever you are in town throwing out the first pitch. Anything like that? BROOKS KOEPKA: Yeah, I've been asked to do quite a few things. I haven't done them. The Astros always ask me to throw out the first pitch. I've done a few things. I think the Mets. Just different things like that. But sometimes you end up, a lot of times they're in tournament weeks are when they ask and I get pretty busy in my routine, I get really focused on it and don't like to vary too much. By the time I go to the gym, come out here, go back to the gym, do physio, I mean but it's a quite a long day. And the last thing I want to do is go out, I mean it's fun to watch the sports, I love sporting events, going to them is fun, but sometimes on the road it's a lot easier to watch it on TV. Q. 10 o'clock bedtime then too? BROOKS KOEPKA: Exactly. See. Q. 10 o'clock bedtime. I would like to get to bed at 10 o'clock. BROOKS KOEPKA: It's nice. Here I've got no problem, I can tell you that. I've got no problem here. Q. Before you get to Pebble Beach and try and win three in a row, there's the Masters. You didn't get to play in it last year. I'm just wondering having not done it if there's a little more excitement a little more anticipation in your mind to get back to Augusta, see what can you do there, and especially with the game that you've been showing and winning two majors. BROOKS KOEPKA: Yeah, I feel like every time I've gone to Augusta I think I've been trending in the right direction. I think we have gone what, 31st, 21st and 11. So I can knock off another 1, that would be nice. It's a good little pattern going in. I mean, I like the golf course. It suits me really well. You want to be peaking right around that time. Peak in March for THE PLAYERS and then you've got three majors there -- or four majors in what, three and a half months I think is what it is? So it would be a nice time to have my game going in the right direction, feeling confident, and you got three months until now, from now. Q. How tough was that to sit out? BROOKS KOEPKA: Yeah, it wasn't fun. Watching it on TV, it was a lot different. You don't -- when I'm there obviously you get done playing and you know the pin, you know where everything is at and you know oh, man, I know how much this breaks, how hard of a shot that is. You still know but you doesn't have a real true feeling of where that pin position is because you haven't played it. A lot of them are pretty similar but if there's a new pin. Watching the guys compete that was the hardest thing. I just missed competition. I didn't have any competition. The only, I couldn't even go to the gym, I couldn't do anything, so there was no competition in anything I did. I basically was just at home playing with my dog and just chilling. RACHEL NOBLE: Thanks, Brooks. BROOKS KOEPKA: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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