decision to walk out on his nine-figure LIV contract<\/a> a year early, as well as the developments which led to him being reinstated via the PGA Tour\u2019s Returning Members Program. <\/p>\nIt was clear that he had no interest in burning bridges with LIV, but Koepka said that he began exploring his exit from the league around the time of the Ryder Cup last September. <\/p>\n
Koepka stressed that the most important factor in splitting from LIV and rejoining the PGA Tour was that he was able to focus on his family. His wife, Jena, announced in October that she had suffered a miscarriage. The couple have a two-year-old son, Crew, who is in attendance this week. <\/p>\n
The American also revealed why Tiger Woods was the first person he called when getting the ball rolling on how he would make a comeback. Here\u2019s everything Koepka had to say ahead of his PGA Tour return\u2026<\/p>\n
Brooks Koepka on\u2026\u2026making his return to the PGA Tour<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels a little bit different. I\u2019m definitely a little bit more nervous his week just coming back. But it feels good. I\u2019m super grateful to be back. Yeah, there\u2019s a lot of guys I don\u2019t know over the past I guess three and a half years. There\u2019s a lot of new faces, but excited to meet those guys and feel like I\u2019m part of the Tour.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2026 the most important factors in coming back<\/p>\n
\u201cJust my family. A lot\u2019s gone on over the past five, six months with my family. That played a big role into coming back. Then just having conversations with my wife, my team and being able to make that decision to come back was \u2013 I guess tough conversations \u2013 but it was what was best for me and best for my family. I think that was a decision that my wife, myself, everybody, my team thought that that was best as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2026 if he\u2019d do anything differently after joining LIV in 2022<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t regret anything I do. I\u2019ve learned a lot. I\u2019ve always enjoyed the ride no matter where I\u2019m at. You also learn from anything, anything you\u2019re doing, so I have no regrets. But at the same time, I\u2019m excited for this new chapter, grateful to be out here. For Brian Rolapp [new PGA Tour CEO], Jay [Monahan, outgoing commissioner], Tiger [Woods], everybody that was able to get me out here, I\u2019m super grateful for it and I\u2019m excited.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2026 how his return to the PGA Tour happened<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to get into too much detail about the family issues that we\u2019ve had, but I believe it was September, right around the Ryder Cup week, we had to be in New York, we were up there for a little bit. Circumstances kind of changed in my family a little bit. <\/p>\n
\u201cThen that\u2019s when things started to change and evolve and just started to have those conversations of what\u2019s best for my family. So we took it from there. Me and LIV, we left that agreement, everybody was happy with it. They understood the situation that I was in. Just excited to be out here. The 23rd [of December] I was released and then called Tiger right away, then that process got the ball rolling.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2026Phoning Tiger Woods first<\/p>\n
\u201cI called him. I\u2019ve always had a good relationship with Tiger and I felt like that was what I wanted to do. Once I had the opportunity to, I guess, get reinstated on the PGA Tour, it was exciting and I kind of didn\u2019t really know what to do. That was the first person that came to mind. I didn\u2019t know Brian [Rolapp], I didn\u2019t have a relationship with him obviously just because he\u2019s pretty new. Jay [Monahan] was going to be the next call. But I felt like Tiger was somebody that I have relied on in the past for questions and answers, and how to deal with things. I felt like that would be the most comfortable call for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2026. facing Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy on regular basis again<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m super excited. Obviously Scottie\u2019s been dominant. Yeah, Rory\u2019s got five [majors] now. I don\u2019t think anybody\u2019s shocked by this if you\u2019ve watched golf over the last few years, how well those guys are playing. I\u2019m excited to battle with them. I think that will be really fun. I think just the competitive side
of me, obviously, you obviously want to do a little bit better but that\u2019s going to be very tough to do better than Scottie right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2026 whether he\u2019s had tough conversations with players unhappy about his return<\/p>\n
\u201cNot everybody\u2019s going to have the same opinion, that\u2019s the exciting part about this, right? There are some guys that are happy to see me back and some guys that won\u2019t and I understand that. Like I said, that will be the fun part of having those conversations. <\/p>\n
\u201cSome of them might be tougher than others, but at the same time it\u2019s the opportunity I was given and anybody that I guess is in my shoes that has the opportunity to come back and the position that I was in, I was going to take it. I wasn\u2019t just going to not play. If they gave me an opportunity to play, I wanted to play.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brooks Koepka has addressed the media ahead of his return to the PGA Tour at the Farmers Insurance…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437111,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-437110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}