{"id":501972,"date":"2026-02-27T01:02:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T01:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/501972\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T01:02:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T01:02:07","slug":"brooks-koepka-returns-to-the-cognizant-classic-for-his-first-start-there-since-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/501972\/","title":{"rendered":"Brooks Koepka returns to the Cognizant Classic for his first start there since 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. (AP) \u2014 There are countless comforts of home for Brooks Koepka<\/a> this week when he plays the Cognizant Classic. That doesn’t mean everything is necessarily comfortable.<\/p>\n

His son watched plenty of hockey from the Milan Cortina Olympics<\/a> over the last few days, which means there was quite a bit of hockey playing inside the Koepka home. Evidently, Crew Koepka \u2014 in his defense, the kid isn’t even 3 yet \u2014 hasn’t exactly mastered the art of stickhandling. And his father learned that the hard way.<\/p>\n

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\u201cTook a stick to the face the other day at the house, so that was interesting. It\u2019s been a while since that happened. It definitely hurts,\u201d Koepka said. \u201cI feel Jack Hughes and his pain<\/a> a little bit, but didn\u2019t lose a tooth, thankfully.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hughes \u2014 after losing some teeth against Canada \u2014 scored the game-winning goal for Olympic gold last Sunday. Koepka would happily settle for a win this Sunday, in his third tournament<\/a> since returning to the PGA Tour after nearly four years with Saudi-funded LIV Golf.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust want to put myself in contention here a few times before Augusta,\u201d Koepka said, \u201cand see where everything lies.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Koepka is a Palm Beach County native, and this is his home tournament. He came to it as a little kid, carried the scoring sign for some players when he was learning the game, and now is about to play in it for the eighth time as a pro and the first time since 2022.<\/p>\n

He’ll have plenty of friendly faces in the crowd on Thursday and Friday \u2014 some of them people he rarely gets a chance to see because of his schedule \u2014 and he’s hoping to stick around for the weekend at PGA National so he can see them on Saturday and Sunday as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a true hometown event,\u201d Koepka said. \u201cLike I said, (I was) coming to it for years when I was a kid, and then I don\u2019t think anybody in my family or really anybody has got more than like a 25-minute drive, my friends. It\u2019s nice to be able to be this close to home and to have everybody come out.\u201d<\/p>\n

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It’s a different tournament than when Koepka last played at PGA National.<\/p>\n

First off, it was still The Honda Classic then. PGA National played to a par 70 in those days; par is 71 now. The winning scores the last three times Koepka played this event were 10 under, 6 under and 9 under; the winning scores in the last three years were 14 under, 17 under and 19 under \u2014 and Jake Knapp shot an opening-round 59 last year, something that didn’t seem remotely possible at PGA National just a few years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a little bit too easy last year, I thought,\u201d said Ireland’s Shane Lowry, who now calls the Palm Beach area his full-time home and, like Koepka, will be sleeping in his own bed this week. \u201cI don\u2019t want to exactly see 59s around here. I hope the scoring is a little bit more difficult this year and it plays like it used to.\u201d<\/p>\n

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There are no players in the field who are currently in the top 25 of the world rankings; Ryan Gerard, at No. 26, tops that list. Meanwhile, 11 different top 25 players \u2014 including four of the world’s top five \u2014 appeared in TGL matches on Monday and Tuesday night, just a few miles away from PGA National.<\/p>\n

It’s been an issue for the Cognizant for years. The current tour schedule has it wedged into a spot that kicks off the Florida Swing \u2014 with Bay Hill and the Players coming up in the next two weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure every tournament, bar the signature events, don\u2019t get the fields that they\u2019d want,\u201d Lowry said. \u201cI think it is in a very tough spot in the schedule, probably one of the toughest spots in the schedule, and I don\u2019t think it\u2019s anything to do with the course. The reason players don\u2019t play is players don\u2019t want to play that much. It is a tough stretch of golf. … I do wish a lot of other players would play, but that\u2019s their choices.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Koepka couldn’t play it when he was with LIV. He seems very appreciative of the chance to be back.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a nice event,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely weird staying at home. You just get so accustomed to living out of a suitcase or hotel or whatever. But it\u2019s enjoyable. It\u2019s nice to come back and just feel your own comforts when you get home.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP golf: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/golf<\/a><\/p>\n

Tim Reynolds, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. (AP) \u2014 There are countless comforts of home for Brooks Koepka this week when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[18248,49,48,622,12429,200535,82],"class_list":["post-501972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-brooks-koepka","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-jack-hughes","tag-pga-national","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501972","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=501972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}