The Masters 2019: Brooks Koepka thriving on spite to keep his iron-grip at Augusta

Brooks Koepka may just be the most lethal, weaponised personality in golf, but there is nothing more pointed about the standoffish American than the success he seems to source from spite.

After being questioned and derided over his wavering form and weight loss, the three-time major champion took his eighth lead at a major since the start of 2017, with opening rounds of 66 and an albeit less spectacular 71 at Augusta, revelling in the slight of being overlooked once again.

A line of thought finds little conspiracy in the fact that Koepka’s dip in form coincided with a belated wave of adulation and being crowned the PGA Tour’s player of the year. It was almost as if the devastatingly clinical ice-laden performances that had carried him to victory at the US Open and USPGA Championship in 2018 had somehow been melted away by the warmth of celebration.

Perhaps praise has always been something considered as soft and unwelcome by Koepka, a hassle which only serves to stifle his malice and teeter his drive. But once Brandel Chamblee, the ever-opinionated analyst, questioned Koepka’s alarming revelation that he has lost 1st 10lbs since the turn of the year, the chomping embers hidden behind a linebacker’s frame and cement jaw came to glorious fruition once again.

Chamblee labelled Koepka’s decision to embark on a 1,800 calorie-a-day diet, despite still bench-pressing 325lbs and treating his golf like a gifted encumbrance between protein shakes, as the “most reckless self-sabotage that I have ever seen of an athlete in his prime.” Reportedly, Koepka’s decision is as a result of being an upcoming star in ESPN Magazine’s ‘The Body Issue’ – a fact he will neither confirm nor deny.

On Tuesday, Koepka made a rare admission that he too was considering whether his weight-loss had begun to hamper his game and, even more startling, claimed to have not entered his hallowed auditorium of squat racks and dumbbells for three weeks prior to the tournament.

“I mean, the diet that I was on was probably not the best,” Koepka said. “You’re not going to be in the best physical shape at that point. You look at somebody like Michael Phelps or somebody like that eating 6,000 or 7,000 calories by lunch time. But I wanted to do it and try to lose some weight, and maybe went about it a little too aggressively for just a long period of time and the intensity of what I was doing.”

But by the time Koepka emerged from the leaders’ shadow in the long afternoon on day one at Augusta - bludgeoning his way through the back-nine, birdieing four straight holes and securing a share of the overnight lead with Bryson DeChambeau - there was no ill-conceived self-doubt, only that same wonderful conviction. The type which appears to translate from oxygen to club face via a type of angry Hadron Collider, no matter what percentage its body fat.

Even if alluding him for a large portion of the second day, in this vein of form he is an astonishingly ruthless player, not just a seismic pulley to top long-driving statistics but an exquisite hand around the greens. He’s cynical, calculated, and despite what many assume, a thinker’s players with one of the sharpest minds, even if he prefers to veil it.

Sometimes you get the sense that his Herculean build has seen him unfairly slandered as being less intelligent. He’s that big-hitting jock, the angry gunslinger who himself believes he is too cool for the sport. Maybe that’s contributed to his backward programming but, at this stage, it’s hard not to accept that he enjoys it; that he thrives off being a contrarian and in proving people wrong. It is the fuel of doing it his way, which has propelled him to the next level and enables him to gleefully consign anyone who dares discredit him to the status of just another opponent to mourn.

“I lift too many weights, and [people say] I’m too big to play golf,” Koepka said. ”And then when I lose weight, I’m too small. So, I don’t know. I don’t know what to say. I’m too big and I’m too small. Listen, I’m going to make me happy. I don’t care what anybody else says. I’m doing it for me, and obviously it seems to work.”

Obviously, it does.