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Brooks Koepka on PGA Championship Crowd: 'No One Gave a S--t' About Knee Injury
May 23, 2021
The crowd at the Kiawah Island Golf Resort formed around Phil Mickelson like bees to a hive Sunday at the No. 18 during the fourth round of his PGA Championship title, making for quite the scene.
Not everybody was thrilled with the situation, however.
"It would have been cool if I didn't have a knee injury and got dinged a few times in the knee in that crowd because no one gave a s--t, personally," Brooks Koepka, who was in the final pairing with Mickelson, told reporters. "But if I was fine, yeah, it would have been cool."
Mickelson was just as surprised by the swarm of fans.
"I don't think I've ever had an experience like that, so thank you for that," he told reporters.
Mickelson shot six under for the tournament, topping Koepka and Louis Oosthuizen by two strokes. None played brilliantly Sunday: Mickelson and Oosthuizen each shot one over, while Koepka shot two over. But it was good enough to get Mickelson the win, making him the oldest PGA Tour player in history (50) to win a major.
"Phil played great," Koepka told reporters. "It's pretty cool to see, but a bit disappointed in myself."
"I'm not happy. I don't know if there's a right word I can say on here without getting fined, but it hurts a little bit," he added. "It's one of those things where I just never felt comfortable over the putts. I don't know why, what happened."
One thing is for certain—nobody will ever forget the throng of fans that seemed to swallow up Mickelson and Koepka at the 18th. Perhaps Jordan Spieth summed up the entire spectacle amid Mickelson's improbable win best.
"It's Phil, right?" he said, ESPN's Nick Pietruszkiewicz. "It's theater."