When American golfer Brooks Koepka left the PGA Tour in 2022, he didn’t seem all that sorry about it.
“F**k all of those country club kids who talk sh*t about me,” he reportedly said of players like Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas, who had criticized him for joining LIV Golf.
According to golf writer Alan Shipnuck, who described the scene in his book, “LIV And Let Die,” Koepka continued, “You think I give a f**k what they think? You think I care what people say about me? I just had three surgeries and I’m supposed to turn down $130 million? I grew up with nothing. After I signed the contract, the first person I called was my mom. We both cried.”
Koepka’s mom, Denise Jakows, subsequently denied – via a post on X – that they cried together on that call, but the anecdote more broadly captured Koepka’s state of mind as he turned his back on the Tour and made the controversial leap to LIV.
At that stage of his career, he was a four-time major champion, who’d spent more than a year on top of the world rankings, but he was unhappy, seemingly bitter and resentful; feeling unloved and underappreciated, he preferred the warm embrace of a startup organization with serious money to burn.
The likes of Sergio García and Patrick Reed followed a similar path, but less than four years after walking away, Koepka is the first to return to the establishment: the PGA Tour.
“When I was a child,” he wrote in a statement on January 12, “I always dreamed about competing on the PGA Tour, and I am just as excited today to announce that I am returning to the PGA Tour.”
Two days before Christmas, and with a year left on his contract with the Saudi-backed tour, Koepka had quit LIV, explaining that he wanted to spend more time at home. Koepka had been contemplating his future since September, when his wife Jena miscarried their second child. He’d come to realize that the predominantly international schedule of LIV made it hard to be around family, and he wanted his wife and son to be around him all the time. So, three weeks after quitting LIV, a flurry of activity at the PGA Tour headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, resulted in Koepka walking into CEO Brian Rolapp’s office and agreeing to the terms of his return.
In a letter to the fans, Rolapp estimated that the cost to Koepka could range from $50 to $85 million in potential earnings, including a five-year forfeiture of potential equity in the PGA Tour’s Player Equity Program, “representing one of the largest financial repercussions in professional sports history.”
Koepka’s return is a coup for the PGA, which has been at loggerheads with LIV since it began poaching some of their top talent in 2022, and a triumph for its new CEO, who arrived from the NFL last summer.
Many of the players were involved in the vote to bring Koepka back, but some are conflicted. Speaking to SiriusXM PGA Tour Radio’s “Gravy and the Sleeze” show, 2023 US Open champion Wyndham Clark admitted that he was hesitant.
Clark, who declined an opportunity to join LIV in 2024, said, “If you would’ve told me that I could have gone for a year and a half, make a boatload of money and then be able to come back and play on the Tour, I think almost everyone would have done that.
“I personally really like Brooks,” Wyndham added, “and I think it’s ultimately really good for the PGA Tour. But also, as a guy who had an opportunity to go to LIV, it’s kind of frustrating that he’s able to get the cake and also eat it. I’m very torn.”
Many golf fans who are cheering Koepka’s return are just as happy to see the weakening of LIV, which plunged men’s professional golf into a state of civil war, and it feels as though the PGA Tour has finally gained the upper hand.
Two weeks after Koepka’s defection, Reed made it clear that he was still a free agent and had not renewed his LIV contract. He said this weekend that he would be surprised if he doesn’t play in LIV’s season opener in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, next week but if he doesn’t re-sign with the startup then he’ll focus on the DP World Tour (formerly the European Tour) – the 2018 Masters champion is not currently welcome on the PGA Tour.
But Rolapp would love to tempt Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm and Cam Smith back into the fold with a carefully curated “Returning Player Program.” His stated intention is to make the PGA the strongest product possible, regardless of past infractions.
The PGA Tour has missed these guys. Koepka’s robotic demeanor and his attitude – best summed up by his declaration that the majors are the easiest tournaments to win – sometimes made him harder to warm to, but he relished his role as a villain and his rivalry with other players certainly made him entertaining. He’s one of only two players to win a major tournament – in his case the 2023 PGA Championship – since joining LIV.
And he returns with the endorsement of the biggest golf star of all time. “I think it’s incredible for the Tour, incredible for all the fans – they wanted to see the best play against the best,” said Tiger Woods to ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt.
“If he’s good, he’s good. If he plays great, he plays great. If he wins tournaments, he wins tournaments. There’s no reason why we should hold him back.”
It remains to be seen how Koepka will fare in the toughest fields in world golf, whether he still has the desire to grind away, week after week. His public motivation for quitting LIV and returning to the PGA Tour is his family, but a new marketing campaign might provide a peek into a private one as well.
In a 30-second film featuring Rory McIlroy talking about playing for history and Scottie Scheffler and Tommy Fleetwood enthusing about their love of the game, a grinning Brooks Koepka appears for barely a second at the very end, just before the caption appears, “Where the best belong.”
Maybe that’s one of the final pieces of the puzzle: Acceptance.
