Yahoo Finance Brooks Koepka to play the Masters less than a month after knee surgery
Though another knee injury put his plans in jeopardy, Brooks Koepka made it to Augusta National on Sunday and played a few practice holes ahead of the Masters tournament.
Koepka underwent surgery on his right knee to fix a dislocated kneecap and ligament damage on March 16, something he said happened after he slipped and fell while he was with his family in Florida.
"Putting it back into place really hurt," he said, via ESPN. "Dislocated the kneecap. I went down and just straightened it and popped it back in.
"Seven days out of surgery, I was hitting balls. I don't think anybody expected this. I didn't know. The goal was to play Augusta and so we were going to see if we could play.”
Koepka has dealt with a myriad of knee injuries throughout the past two seasons on Tour. He underwent a stem cell treatment to repair a partially torn patella tendon in his left knee after the 2019 Tour Championship, and then re-tore that tendon a few months later after he slipped on wet concrete at The CJ Cup.
He then withdrew from last season’s The Northern Trust, forcing him out of the FedExCup Playoffs early.
Koepka got off to a great start on Tour this season, however, and finished in a tie for seventh at the rescheduled Masters in November before winning the Waste Management Phoenix Open in February. He came in second at the World Golf Championships-Workday Championship, too, though that was his last outing on Tour.
"It's frustrating," he said, via ESPN. "Tough to put into words. I've just had to take it one day at a time and see how it goes. There's been a lot of downs."
Koepka said that he hopes to play nine holes each day leading up to the first round on Thursday. That, and the “seven-plus hours every day in rehab” he’s spent getting ready, is hopefully enough to have him ready to go at Augusta National.
"I walked the back nine a few times in the last week and a half," Koepka said, via ESPN. "I've walked enough."
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