The Jupiter resident missed the cut at the Honda Classic and shot an 81 on Saturday at Bay Hill in the last two weeks. He flew to Las Vegas to meet with the legendary coach and believes he’s "on the right track"

PONTE VEDRA BEACH – Brooks Koepka has been humbled.

Facing his biggest crisis since rising to the top of his profession, Koepka flew to Las Vegas to see legendary coach Butch Harmon on Sunday, one day after shooting his worst round on the PGA Tour.

Koepka needed therapy on his game and his psyche after a steady decline since the inactivity due to a problematic knee. He heard what his team – coach Claude Harmon III (Butch’s son) and shot game coach Pete Cowan – was saying but "I just couldn’t do it." He made no excuses putting it all on himself.

"I felt like I just had so much going on in my head, so many swing thoughts and needed to clear the slate," Koepka said Tuesday after hitting balls at TPC Sawgrass in preparation for The Players Championship.

"Claude was telling me the same things he's said for five years … and for some reason I just couldn't do it. That's on me. It's not Claude's fault. It's not Pete's fault. It's not anybody's fault except my own and the fact that I couldn't do it, I just needed a fresh set of eyes just to look at it and see if he saw anything out of the ordinary."

Koepka, the Jupiter resident who was raised in Wellington, insists his knee, on which he had stem cell treatment last fall, is not the issue although the inactivity due to the knee (he has played 22 competitive rounds since October) certainly has not helped. He says what has made him successful is he does not listen to anybody aside from his coaches. And he does not tinker.

"I don't tinker with clubs, I don't make changes on anything and then all of a sudden I kind of veered off the path (to), ‘let's try this, I think this is going to make me better,’ when it got me to world No. 1, it got me four majors, seven wins out here," he said. "Why am I changing that?"

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Koepka met with Butch Harmon on Monday and planned to be there Tuesday but was told to get to The Players and practice. He was satisfied with the results Tuesday after his session on the range.

"We could see it on video and what I was trying to do and didn't know how to get there," he said. "There's a few things that were wrong and the two things he told me were what Claude's been telling me but just in a different way and it clicked, or it felt better.

"I'm on the right track. I think I just needed a little bit of reassurance for myself."

Though not his coach, Butch Harmon is very familiar with Koepka’s game. He has watched Koepka at the Floridian in Palm Bay, he stood by when Koepka worked with Claude and he was at the Ryder Cup.

"I just needed a different set of eyes, maybe something might click, because I was failing," Koepka said.

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Koepka is being tested for the first time since a meteoric rise that resulted in winning four majors in a 23-month span starting with the 2017 U.S. Open through last year’s PGA Championship and reaching No. 1 in the world. He since has dropped to No. 3.

He has played in eight events worldwide since last year’s Tour Championship, the last event of the 2018-19 season. He has one top-25 finish, a 17th in Saudi Arabia, has missed the cut twice, including at the Honda, and was forced to withdraw once because of the knee.

In 21 Tour starts last season he won three times and 13 times placed in the top 25.

Then, last week, in the third round at Bay Hill, Koepka’s game imploded with his 81. He hit three fairways and five greens and needed 30 putts.

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About 24 hours later, and with the blessings of Claude Harmon, he was on a plane to see Butch.

More than anything, Koepka needs to regain the swagger and impenetrable demeanor that has defined his game the last three years. He is unaffected by pressure and the bigger the stakes the better he plays, as shown by his results in majors.

In fact, one of his vulnerabilities is approaching regular tournaments differently from majors. He cited No. 6 at Honda where he put two shots in the water, saying he would never have taken a chance off the tee in a major making sure he missed it to the right, and then would never hit it in the water a second time after his drop. It was his first triple bogey in 447 holes.

"Someone said this (Tuesday) that I have a hard time accepting that I'm going to make mistakes in a regular Tour event, but in a major I seem to know that I'm going to make mistakes and I just want to minimize those," he said. "I try to be too perfect out here a lot of times and try to never miss a golf shot, try to win it with my iron play, my driving, when a lot of the times it's not how you win."

If there is a place to regain that confidence, that swagger, perhaps it’s the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass. Although he has never finished higher than 11th in five previous Players starts, Koepka shares the low 18-hole score, a 63 in the final round two years ago.

"Good memories of this place," he said. "I like it. Hopefully that can bring out some good mojo."

Much-needed mojo.

tom_dangelo@pbpost.com

@tomdangelo44