After U.S. Open Breakthrough, Brooks Koepka Thanks a Calming Force

ERIN, Wis. — Trey Jones had replied to dozens of texts and emails and spoken by phone with several well-wishers Sunday night after Brooks Koepka, whom Jones coached at Florida State, became the fourth Seminole, after Hubert Green, Paul Azinger and Jeff Sluman, to win a men’s golf major championship.

The hour was late, and Jones, who was in Omaha to support the Florida State baseball team in the College World Series, was exhausted. He fell asleep quickly, only to be awakened after midnight by his phone’s ringtone. Dreading what news such a late-night call might bring, Jones groggily answered.

But it was Koepka on the other end, with words that every coach or educator thrills to hear.

Jones said Koepka thanked him for molding him into a golfer capable of winning the United States Open, which Koepka had done in convincing fashion hours earlier with a closing five-under 67, the second-lowest score of the day, on a windswept Erin Hills course. He told Jones that he loved him and added, “I wouldn’t be here without you.”

At Florida State, Koepka was a three-time all-American with a five-alarm temper.

“On a scale of one to 10, it was close to the top,” Jones said. “It was way, way up there.”

Replay the club-slamming, bag-kicking behavior caught on camera of the emotional 22-year-old Spaniard Jon Rahm during his two rounds at Erin Hills, and you get the picture.

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