You never know who you’ll bump into on the first tee at Royal Liverpool Golf Club.
Brooks Koepka — along with Scottie Scheffler and Cameron Smith — played a practice round Monday with Ryder Cup captain Zach Johnson, and the topic of this year’s Ryder Cup just happened to come up.
Koepka called his conversations with Johnson “interesting.”
At this point, it remains unclear if LIV players will be allowed to participate in the Ryder Cup on either side. For his part, Koepka is third in the U.S. rankings, all and only on the heels of his performance in the majors.
“Walked on the first tee right behind Scottie (Scheffler). He didn’t have a tee time, neither did I and neither did Zach and neither did Cam (Smith),” Koepka said Tuesday. “There was a good little wait, so we all played.”
Regarding the Ryder Cup, Koepka said, “We got to talk about it a little bit, just what’s going on, I guess how the team is shaping up. It’s kind of interesting.
“Yeah, it was just hearing his perspective and all the stuff he’s got to do,” Koepka said later. “The PGA of America does a really good job in easing it for him, and just kind of talking about the preparation for it, what our team is going to do, where are we going to be, and just a little bit more about the shuffle of guys and the stuff they have kind of behind the scenes, stats, stuff like that. It’s quite interesting just hearing about it all.”
It was first thought that players who jumped to LIV had forfeited any chance of participating in the Ryder Cup. But as recently as May, Johnson said “no decisions have been made” regarding LIV players and the Ryder Cup.
“I just think it’s too premature, frankly irresponsible, to even have any sort of opinion about that,” Johnson said then.
Koepka and Dustin Johnson are two LIV players who remain eligible for the Ryder Cup because they were granted PGA of America membership — a requirement to be selected for the team — through 2024.
As for this week, Koepka is paired with Patrick Cantlay and Hideki Matsuyama for the first two rounds Thursday and Friday.
Koepka, in the final pairing with eventual winner Jon Rahm at the Masters, was frustrated with Cantlay’s pace of play in the group directly in front of him at Augusta in April, calling it “brutally slow.” Koepka went on to call for stroke penalties for future infractions.
–Field Level Media