Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka aim to put knee pain behind them

KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. – Brooks Koepka is still recovering from surgery in March to repair a dislocated kneecap and ligament damage to his right knee.

Dustin Johnson withdrew from the AT&T Byron Nelson last week due to discomfort in his surgically repaired left knee.

Both will tee it up at the 103rd PGA Championship at Kiawah, starting Thursday.

“For two straight years it's been left knee, right knee, herniated a disc in my neck,” said Koepka, who won the PGA in 2018 and ’19 and has six top-15 finishes in eight starts. “… I can deal with the pain. That's not an issue. It's just a matter of being able to hit shots that I want to hit and do things I want to do, and I'm starting to be able to do that.

“Even though I'm not 100 percent,” he added, “I can still hit the shots.”

Johnson hasn’t had a top-10 finish since The Genesis Invitational in February, and is coming off a T48 at the Valspar Championship three weeks ago. He has slipped to 11th in the FedExCup and could lose his No. 1 world ranking this week.

Still, after finishing runner-up the last two years, he would be hard-pressed to find a better time than PGA week to get back on track. This PGA week, especially. Johnson grew up in South Carolina and first played Kiawah as a junior. He tied for 48th place at the 2012 PGA at Kiawah. He likes tough courses, and there are few tougher than Kiawah when the wind is up.

“Yeah, health is good,” Johnson said. “I just wanted to spend more time on making sure I was feeling 100 percent for this week and done a lot of work at home, and yeah, I feel really good coming into this week.

“… It just didn't feel right,” he continued. “I got an MRI. Everything was fine. It was the one I had surgery on about a year and a half ago. Just got together with the doctor and physio down there that I use for my rehab and just put together a little bit of a plan to get a little bit stronger.”

The pain has been intermittent for roughly the last six months, he added.

Koepka won the Waste Management Phoenix Open in February but has been limited since. He was in obvious discomfort and unable to bend down to read putts or retrieve his ball from the hole at the Masters last month, and missed the cut.

He also missed the cut at the AT&T Byron Nelson last week, but was pleased, he said, to be able to hit a variety of shots. Kiawah is a long walk – at 7,876 yards, the longest ever for a major – but not hilly, provided one avoids the bunkers.

“It's not like Augusta where I'm trying to figure out what's the best line to walk,” Koepka said.

With so much focus on making a full swing, he added, he neglected his putting. But a deep dive into his work on the greens has him feeling better at the PGA, where he has continued to receive treatment on the knee.

“No, I got everything under control and know what I'm doing,” Koepka said. “Last week was a good test just to see where I'm at for two days. I thought if I got four, it would be nice, but two days of rest didn't hurt me.”