SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — While Patrick Reed was winning the Masters in April, Brooks Koepka sat at home in Florida nursing a left wrist injury that had kept him off the golf course for most of the previous four months. He wouldn’t be cleared to take full swings with his wedges or irons until the Monday after his friends and PGA Tour competitors had departed Augusta National.
That didn’t leave much time for Koepka to prepare to defend his United States Open title. But his swing coach, Claude Harmon III, knew Koepka would be fine when he saw that he was glued to the television, watching the end of the Masters instead of the beginning of the Major League Baseball season.