Yahoo Lifestyle Brooks Koepka still battling knee injury from last year: ‘Nothing is improved’
Sunday marked yet another tough outing for Brooks Koepka.
Koepka fired an 8-over 80 in the final round of the Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village in Ohio, bringing him to 12-over on the week and near the bottom of the leaderboard among players who made the cut.
To make things worse, Koepka’s knee is apparently still a major problem, too.
He underwent an MRI on Monday, and said his knee is no better than it was in October.
“Just wanted to check on it, see where it’s at,” Koepka said Saturday, via Golf Digest. “We got the results right after Korea, and then we just wanted to check, and nothing is improved. It’s still the same. So we’ll figure it out when we’re done.”
Koepka underwent a stem cell treatment on his left knee to repair a partially torn patella tendon right after the end of last season — an injury he said had been bothering him all year. He made his debut this season a few months later, though had to withdraw from The CJ Cup in South Korea in October after slipping on wet concrete in the second round and landing on his knee.
He re-tore the patella tendon in that fall, an injury he said was “excruciating.”
The former top-ranked golfer returned for The Genesis Invitational in February and played in three events before play was suspended this season due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He’s played in four of the six events since play resumed, and finished seventh at the RBC Heritage, however came in T32 at the Charles Schwab Challenge and missed the cut last week at the Workday Charity Open.
‘You’ve got to play your way into it’
Though he’s still injured, Koepka isn’t planning to take any time off if he can help it.
The 30-year-old is scheduled to play the next three weeks on Tour, and may need to play in the season-ending Wyndham Championship next month to ensure his spot in the FedExCup Playoffs — as he’s slipped to No. 154 in the FedExCup standings, outside of the 125-player mark for the first event.
Simply sitting at home, he said, wouldn’t do his game any good.
“You’ve got to play your way into it,” Koepka said, via Golf Digest. “When you don’t have the results you want, you’ve got to go out here and find it. It’s not like you’re just going to sit at home and it’s going to magically … You’ve got to put the work in, put the reps in and it will show eventually.”
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