Brooks Koepka – Memphis Flyer

TPC Southwind won’t be packed with galleries of fans this week, as it typically has been for decades when the PGA Tour comes to town. But make no mistake. With the World Golf Championships-FedEx St. Jude Invitational in town for the second year, Memphis will be the center of the golf universe for four days. The field will include the top eight players in the World Golf Rankings (at the top of the list, Jon Rahm) and 70 others competing for a total purse of $10.5 million and a bounty of 550 FedEx Cup points for the winner.
PGA TOUR

Defending champion Brooks Koepka.

Defending champion Brooks Koepka and three other players answered some questions in advance of the most unusual PGA event Memphis has ever hosted.

There’s irony in the absence of fans in golf, as silence is expected on each shot. Is it a different kind of silence, though, with no gallery?

Brooks Koepka: I’ll tell you what, it’s very weird. You’re used to so many people following your group and cheering, and even when you hit a bad shot, the little gasp they do, you’re used to that. It’s a weird feeling. Sometimes when you hit one offline, you can see the crowd kind of scurry over there so you know where it is and it just now becomes a little bit tougher. I’ve had to do it a few times, but you’re searching for a ball over there; that three minutes comes up rather quick. You don’t have as many people searching for it. It is weird when you make a birdie and there’s no applause, no cheer, no anything. It’s kind of an eerie feeling, but at the same time, I’m just happy to be back playing.

Tommy Fleetwood: For me, I’ve always kind of pictured the atmosphere with crowds and everything, whether it be winning a major or winning a Tour event or anything like that. I always think about what that feeling’s going to be, the reaction and interaction with the crowds. I think at times you’ve seen the emotion from players — which has been just the same — but there’s no doubt about it, there’s going to be less noise, less ebbs and flows momentum‑wise without the crowd living and breathing it with you. So maybe that does play a big part. Probably be silly to say that it doesn’t, but we’ll see.

Tony Finau: It’s really strange. I thrive on that energy, having them out here. I don’t mind the distraction of fans. That dynamic is amazing for our game. I miss that energy.

Rafa Cabrera-Bello: You miss the crowds, obviously. We want silence, but only for the moment before we hit. The rest of the time, we don’t mind [the crowd noise] at all. We wish they were here.

Those watching the WGC on television will welcome any live sports in ways they haven’t before. Do you feel like the PGA Tour is providing a form of stress-relief by playing during the pandemic?

Cabrera-Bello: I have no doubt it’s been good. We have the opportunity to be one of the first sports back out there, as close to normal as it can possibly be. If there are fans who might not otherwise be watching, it will be good to grow the game.

Much of the season’s rhythm was lost with the cancellation of the Masters and U.S. Open. Does this put that much more of a premium on a tournament like the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational?

Finau: Every tournament seems to be extremely important. No matter whether you’re playing for Ryder Cup points, FedEx Cup points, world-ranking points. They’re all extremely important because of how condensed the season has been. You look at every week as a major week.

Cabrera-Bello: We may play fewer majors this year, so that would give more importance to the World Golf Championships, but they’ll always be a step down from the majors, unfortunately, for me.

Professional golf in Memphis has long been tied to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Have you been able to visit the hospital . . . and does this connection distinguish the upcoming tournament on your own playing schedule?

Finau: It’s a great tournament. The work they do for St. Jude is amazing. I’ve been down to visit that hospital. It’s pretty cool. Gives you a sense of humility, seeing how grateful those kids are just to have life. I’m looking forward to competing there.

Cabrera-Bello: It’s amazing. It’s one of the best courses we play all year, FedEx has its headquarters there [in Memphis], and what they do to help the kids [at St. Jude]. When you can manage to save a kid’s life, there’s nothing better in the world than that. As a recent father, I can only imagine what parents go through when they have a sick kid. All the support — and not just financial, but moral — for St. Jude is truly unbelievable.

There’s an odd sensation to being a Memphis sports fan while away from Memphis. I spent last week on the North Carolina coast, a gathering of family scheduled before the dates of the first World Golf Championships-FedEx St. Jude Invitational were made public. Which means I had to follow, from afar, the greatest gathering of golfers the Bluff City has ever seen.
CBS Sports

Brooks Koepka takes the trophy in Memphis.

And what an extraordinary event it turned out to be. In pulling away from the world’s third-ranked player (Rory McIlroy), Brooks Koepka — the world’s top-ranked player, and rising — won his first WGC event, took home $1.7 million, and made a new fan for every dollar earned, it seemed, by all the glowing things he had to say about Memphis, the Southwind course, and especially, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The greatest golfer in the world relished winning in Memphis.

Emphasis on that last sentence, as the lead-up to this first WGC in Memphis seemed to be dominated by one of the three top-50 players who chose not to make the trip. As one top-10 player after another — Dustin Johnson, Justin Rose, Justin Thomas, Jon Rahm — booked a flight to Memphis, social media throbbed with the question, “Will Tiger be here?”

After missing the cut at the British Open — and with health concerns, again — Tiger Woods chose to skip Memphis, again. The finest golfer of the century has yet to play a competitive hole at TPC Southwind, and you know what? It’s Tiger’s loss. I got called for BS when I suggested at the commitment deadline that Woods needs the Memphis tournament more than we need him, but I was precisely right. Tournament director Darrell Smith and his staff have put on a world-class event for years, and in support of the fight against childhood cancer. For crying out loud, anyone who chooses not to be part of such a weekend is missing more than a paycheck.

Let’s pause a moment to relish the international impact of last weekend’s tournament. At the end of the first found last Thursday, seven countries were represented among the top 12 players. Koepka and McIlroy were not among them. And it kept getting better. At the end of play Friday, five players were within three shots of the leader, England’s Matthew Fitzpatrick, but Koepka still wasn’t among them. With a 64 in Saturday’s third round, Koepka climbed into second place, behind McIlroy who shot an 8-under-par 62. So two of the world’s top three players walked Southwind’s 18 holes Sunday, the planet’s golf axis tilting here in Memphis. You had to wonder if Woods was watching, wherever he happened to be nursing what ails him.

I got home in time to see the final few holes on TV, to see St. Jude patients greeting the leaders as they finished a tournament the players will remember as much as us fans (even those of us getting updates during a cross-state drive home). There are days that feel like sunshine at the beach, no matter how land-locked we might be at the time. I left the Atlantic coast Saturday, only to find the sunniest moment of my vacation right here in our back yard.

• It’s been a slog of a season for the Memphis Redbirds, but two outfielders made some history last week. On Friday night in Oklahoma City, Randy Arozarena became only the third Redbird to hit for the cycle in a Memphis win over the Dodgers. All three cycles have come away from AutoZone Park, Mark Little accomplishing the feat at Colorado Springs in 2000 and Luke Voit pulling it off last year at Iowa. Then on Saturday night, Lane Thomas became only the eighth Redbird to hit three home runs in a game. It’s an achievement he can discuss in detail with teammate Adolis Garcia, who knocked three baseballs over the wall last year in a game at Salt Lake.