World No 3 Rory McIlroy and newly crowned PGA Championship winner Brooks Koepka will make for a spicy pairing in the first two rounds of the 123rd US Open at Los Angeles Country Club.
The two will tee off on the par-70 North Course alongside 2021 Masters champion Hideki Matsuyama on Thursday, when the US Open returns to Los Angeles for the first time since it was held at Riviera Country Club in 1948.
Koepka passed McIlroy’s total of four major titles when he won his fifth at the PGA Championship at Oak Hill last month.
McIlroy hasn’t lifted a major trophy since he won the PGA Championship and Open Championship in 2014 – a drought that drew a dig from Koepka back in 2019 when the American noted that McIlroy hadn’t won a major “since I’ve been on the PGA Tour.”
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“I just don’t view it as a rivalry,” Koepka said back then. “I’m not looking at anybody behind me.”
The two also ended up on opposite sides when Koepka made the leap to the Saudi-backed LIV Golf circuit, with McIlroy championing the PGA Tour.
The bombshell deal announced last week that will have the PGA Tour and DP World Tour joining forces with LIV’s Saudi backers has raised plenty of questions, and the ill-feeling won’t evaporate overnight.
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