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SAN DIEGO (AP) — Torrey Pines looked plenty familiar to Brooks Koepka. The PGA Tour? Not so much.
Koepka was playing the back nine on the South Course the day he arrived as a footnote in PGA Tour history as the first member to defect to LIV Golf and then be allowed to come back. He was asking about the two paths for players to get into the $20 million signature events.
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“Man, I’ve got a lot of catching up to do,” he said, not even taking into account all the changes still in the works on a new schedule.
It all starts for him Thursday in the Farmers Insurance Open when Koepka plays his first PGA Tour event (majors excluded) since he lost to Dustin Johnson in the quarterfinals of Match Play in 2022.
“I guess it’s a fresh start for me, which is cool,” Koepka said, conceding he would have more nerves than usual because of the response he might get.
It probably helped that a day before he returned to PGA Tour competition, Patrick Reed announced he also was done with the Saudi-funded LIV Golf League and would return later this year.
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“Is it coincidence? I don’t know,” Adam Scott said about two LIV players announcing in a span of a few weeks they were coming back to the PGA Tour. “I guess it’s inevitable given the structure they (LIV) are operating in with contracts expiring.
“As far as the PGA Tour goes, I think it benefits from having more good players here.”
It’s given a boost to the first tournament of the year on network television. CBS has the weekend. And there’s so much interest in the return of Koepka, a five-time major champion, that ESPN will have coverage on its flagship channel from noon to 3 p.m. EST on Thursday and Friday. It will be the first time in nearly 20 years that ESPN has live coverage of a regular PGA Tour event.
Torrey Pines already holds some appeal with its location (a good forecast helps), a public course on edge of the Pacific Ocean with a tournament that dates to 1952, though most of the history starts with Tiger Woods winning eight times as a pro, including the 2008 U.S. Open.
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This also marks the 2026 debut of Xander Schauffele, the…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/brooks-koepka-gets-fresh-start-001706958.html
Author : DOUG FERGUSON
Publish date : 2026-01-29 00:17:00
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