Granite and Block at the PGA
Brooks Koepka was rock-solid in capturing his fifth major, but by then Michael Block had won the crowd at Oak Hill.
Your golf club professional is a businessman. He’s a technocrat. He’s a merchandiser, a politician, a psychologist and, whether he wants to be or not, a workaholic. The one thing he isn’t is a golfer. There aren’t 30 minutes in his day, let alone five hours, to play the 18 holes that are in his custody. The closest he gets to the course, during a typical day, is the teaching station at his driving range.
It is not the most fashionable job in the world. Golf Digest recently chronicled the “brain drain” that has many clubs scrambling to hire guys who want to work 80 hours a day for inadequate money, in the service of a demanding clientele. Few actually do. Marriages flame out. Mental health teeters. As golf gets more popular, the pros who hold the game together are harder to find.
Michael Block was their hero at Oak Hill in Rochester, N.Y. this weekend. He made them feel wanted and appreciated, if only vicariously. His 15th place finish at the PGA Championship won’t improve their lives, and Block himself gets out there more than most of his colleagues, or at least enough to dominate his Southern California section. The fans at Oak Hill bought the story and so did CBS, and so did the folks who run the next PGA Tour event, at Colonial in Fort Worth this week. They offered Block a special exemption to play, a decision that boosts them as much as him. At 46, Block shot 70-70-70-71, aced the 15th hole, got up and down in two somehow on the 18th to finish high enough to guarantee himself a spot in the 2024 PGA in Louisville, and delighted playing partner Rory McIlroy, who warmly hugged Block when it was over.
Block runs Arroyo Trabuco, a spiffy public course in Mission Viejo, Ca. He loves to send out social media posts of his son Dylan, who is good enough to try to qualify for the U.S. Open at L.A.’s Hillcrest Country Club on June 5. Michael will be doing the same thing. The Open is at Los Angeles Country Club, a sanctum that is harder to enter than J.D. Salinger’s home office, and Block can count on much support there. Arroyo Trabuco was hopping throughout Sunday afternoon, with members, friends and guests chanting “Block-ie, block-ie,” and celebrating his every shot.
He is 46, feckless enough to execute a dead shank on Friday and suffer a double bogey, tough enough to shoot even-par 70 anyway. In fact, he had double bogeys in each of his first three rounds, and none of them stuck to him. He made sure he didn’t deprive himself of a second of this experience, to the point that he dropped in for a pint or two at the Pittsford Pub. But he is not foreign to competition. Block has 43 wins in Southern California Section tournaments over the past 10 years and has finished first or second 48 percent of the time. He has won the Southern California State Open and Match Play championships.
He said he wasn’t interested in playing on the PGA Tour Champions, for those 50 and older, in four years. “I love my life,” he said. In 2007 he tried to qualify for the big tour and got to second stage, at TPC Craig Ranch in McKinney, Tex. He let out all the stops just to shoot 73. “And out of 80 guys, I was 67th,” he said. “That’s the day I realized I didn’t have it. I’m much happier being home.”
Block’s hole-in-one dropped out of the sky and into the cup on the fly, denting it slightly. The fans reacted, and Block just thought he’d stiffed it. McIlroy had to come back and tell him he’d slam-dunked it, and Block kept shaking his head and saying, “No way.” But he wasn’t surprised he was playing well. He was merely bemused, and somewhat overwhelmed, that it was happening here and now, as his life turns to the back nine.
Koepka was a little too preoccupied to notice much of this, but he did hear the tumult on 15. “It was a hole-in-one roar,” he said. Later he asked Block, “You’re buying the drinks, right?”
Block’s account, which welcomes a direct deposit of $288,000, will take care of that. So would Koepka’s $3.1 million. Some of that will be devoted to Monday night, when Koepka and his buddies baptize the win in the parking lot of Florida Live Arena, before the Florida Panthers play Carolina in Game 3 of the Stanley Cup semifinals.
Koepka’s win was his third at the PGA. Only Walter Hagen, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods have won more. It also was his fifth major championship, breaking a tie with McIlroy, Raymond Floyd, both Tom Morrises and Ernie Els and four others. Among those who have five majors are Byron Nelson, Seve Ballesteros and Peter Thomson. There are only 14 players on the list above them.
Koepka didn’t win his first until the 2017 U.S. Open at Erin Hills in Wisconsin. He has been troubled, more deeply than most fans and media suspected, by a knee that required surgery and, until recently, had not stopped swelling. That, he said, has been a two-year process. The five wins have come in the past 22 majors he has played. He also had four second-places and has finished in the top five on five other occasions. It would not have taken many reversals of fortune for Koepka to have 10 majors by now, and dissolve all argument about who’s the best golfer in post-Tiger times.
As usual, he won this one with all the intentionality of a tank in combat. Viktor Hovland, the Norwegian who faltered on Sundays in the past two majors, played alongside him. Koepka gave Hovland a couple of openings, specifically when he went way right on his drive on No. 6, but Hovland couldn’t seize the lead. On the 13th Koepka sank a slick 8-footer to make par while Hovland birdied, and still led by one.
Hovland finally ran into his own bump on No. 16, when he drove into a bunker with a steep face, and his escape shot got wedged into the rough and sand at the top. It was a chore to even extricate the ball, and Hovland double bogeyed. Koepka then demonstrated the quality of his own mercy was nonexistent. He guided his approach shot to within four and a half feet and birdied. A one shot lead had become four with two holes left.
It could have been different if Koepka had wavered as he did at the Masters, when he finished second to Jon Rahm. He spent most of that Sunday night rehashing his performance with friends, specifically Don Gambil, who caddies for Brooks’ brother Chris. “He let me have it,” Brooks recalled.
Conditions at Oak Hill were explosive, with some of the front-nine pins in TV-friendly bowls. Five players shot 5-under-par 65, including Scottie Scheffler, who was first in the field in strokes gained from tee to green but 35th in putting, a repeat of his Augusta performance. But Koepka removed everyone’s hopes by shooting 67 for a 9-under total, although he was 11-under after Thursday. He said it might not have happened without those Augusta woes.
The fact that Koepka represents LIV Golf, the breakaway, Saudi-funded cell that might be settling in for a long siege with the PGA Tour, didn’t seem to matter much. Koepka isn’t enchanted with regular events on any tour. It is not “how many” with him, it’s “which ones.”
We knew all that, but we had to learn again that Koepka is a mold-breaker, a One of One. We also might learn, regrettably, that when it comes time to supply the next pool of major champions, there aren’t enough Michael Blocks either.