Brooks Koepka landed the US PGA Championship on Sunday to seal a fifth major championship. The American, whose fourth title came four years ago, was inspired at Oak Hill Country Club, winning by two shots from Viktor Hovland and Scottie Scheffler. Here are our main talking points from the season’s second major.
Five majors move Koepka into whole new bracket
Brooks Koepka’s peerless performance around Oak Hill not only proved he is back, but it hoisted him among golf’s historical elite. The former world No 1 now owns five major titles, separating him from Ernie Els, Raymond Floyd, Rory McIlroy et al. In fact, only Tiger Woods (15) and Phil Mickelson (six) have more among active players.
Five majors feel a totally different category – only 20 golfers have done it – especially when considering Koepka’s quintet were captured since 2017, as top-level professional golf becomes ever more competitive.
Perhaps most impressively, Koepka conceded that only last year he was questioning his future, such were the severity of his injuries. Now competing on LIV Golf, the American hinted he was returning to former form with his runner-up at last month’s Masters, although doubts did surface regarding Koepka’s enduring big-time credentials.
Typically defiant, he came into last week declaring he would not make the same mistakes as Sunday at Augusta. So, little wonder Koepka labelled major No 5 “probably the sweetest of them all”. Still only 33, there could well be more to come.
Hovland doubles down on major promise
OK, so Viktor Hovland did not get the job done this week, adding to other major championships where he flirted with finally breaking through (see last month’s Masters, where Hovland seemed set for a Sunday charge only to post 74 and come home tied-7th).
But on Sunday, the Norwegian provided his best showing under the brightest lights. Hovland, 25, kept Koepka within touching distance for the majority, his often-derided short game coming up strong time and again, only for the fairway bunker on 16 to effectively put pay to his chances.
Having sent his second shot straight into the lip, Hovland took a difficult drop and made double-bogey. With Koepka clinching one of the birdies of the day at the very same hole, the challenger's race was run.
Understandably, Hovland’s typically accepting nature deserted him post-round, when he seemed pretty disconsolate. But, although this will sting, he will eventually take the positives. It felt, maybe really in the first instance, that Hovland’s time will come – most probably sooner rather than later.
All in on the Block party
As weeks go - Koepka aside - they don’t come much sweeter than this. Michael Block, one of 20 PGA club professionals who qualified for the event, came into his fifth PGA Championship seeking simply to make the cut for the first time. He checked that off the bucket list.
Then he played with Justin Rose on Saturday, McIlroy on Sunday, showed incredible grit and gumption with a phenomenal up-and-down on the last to finish in the top 15 on the number, earning a place in next year’s tournament. The performance banked Block, who charges $125 for teaching lessons back at his home club, a cool $288,333.
But the best bit? The slam-dunk, hole-in-one on 15 on Sunday that elicited the loudest cheer of the week and prompted a warm embrace from McIlroy. And Block, 46, later found out he snaffled an invite to this week’s PGA Tour stop: the Crowne Plaza Invitational. All in all, a genuinely fairy-tale four days.
McIlroy must eliminate costly errors to add to major haul
Another major, another one to pass by McIlroy. Of course, the T7 at Oak Hill is another high finish, and it represents a huge improvement on the four-time major champion's past three stroke-play events: missed cuts at Augusta and The Players, and T47 last time out at Quail Hollow. And to be fair, McIlroy admitted he was fighting his swing significantly all tournament, so it wasn’t a woeful week’s work.
Yet his Achilles heel struck at the weekend: needing to make a move, especially Sunday, McIlroy put his foot on the accelerator, but threw in too many mistakes – infuriatingly usually right after he appeared to be gaining momentum.
The silver lining is McIlroy’s game is most certainly better than it has been recently. However, it will need to improve considerably should he finally break his major drought, which has stretched into its 10th year. The Open at Hoylake in July, the scene of his 2014 Claret Jug success, looks an obvious opportunity - even beyond next month’s US Open.
Win for LIV offers intriguing Ryder Cup connotations
Post-victory, Koepka was somewhat cajoled into stressing what it signified in relation to golf’s bigger picture. Bryson DeChambeau, true to form, went a little further, saying “it validates everything we've said from the beginning: that we're competing at the highest level and we have the ability to win major championships”.
DeChambeau, of course, was talking about LIV Golf, the breakaway tour that has fractured the pro game. Sunday marked the first major victory for a LIV member, but in truth it did not feel particularly momentous for that.
What Koepka’s win did, though, is deepen the debate as to whether LIV golfers should be allowed to compete at this year’s Ryder Cup. The new champion sits second on the United States points list.
US captain Zach Johnson was coy on the LIV-Ryder Cup subject all week, but surely Koepka at least ranks among the 12 best Americans at present and thus deserves to make the team. DeChambeau, who excelled at Oak Hill to finish T4, will hope he will too, come September.
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The burning issue
The internal combustion engine is facing a watershed moment – major manufacturer Volvo is to stop producing petroleum-powered vehicles by 2021 and countries in Europe, including the UK, have vowed to ban their sale before 2040. The National takes a look at the story of one of the most successful technologies of the last 100 years and how it has impacted life in the UAE.
Read part four: an affection for classic cars lives on
Read part three: the age of the electric vehicle begins
Read part one: how cars came to the UAE
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The specs
- Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
- Power: 640hp
- Torque: 760nm
- On sale: 2026
- Price: Not announced yet
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The five pillars of Islam
1. Fasting
2. Prayer
3. Hajj
4. Shahada
5. Zakat
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Engine: 2.0-litre 4cyl turbo
Power: 261hp at 5,500rpm
Torque: 405Nm at 1,750-3,500rpm
Transmission: 9-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 6.9L/100km
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh117,059
The five pillars of Islam
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Zakat definitions
Zakat: an Arabic word meaning ‘to cleanse’ or ‘purification’.
Nisab: the minimum amount that a Muslim must have before being obliged to pay zakat. Traditionally, the nisab threshold was 87.48 grams of gold, or 612.36 grams of silver. The monetary value of the nisab therefore varies by current prices and currencies.
Zakat Al Mal: the ‘cleansing’ of wealth, as one of the five pillars of Islam; a spiritual duty for all Muslims meeting the ‘nisab’ wealth criteria in a lunar year, to pay 2.5 per cent of their wealth in alms to the deserving and needy.
Zakat Al Fitr: a donation to charity given during Ramadan, before Eid Al Fitr, in the form of food. Every adult Muslim who possesses food in excess of the needs of themselves and their family must pay two qadahs (an old measure just over 2 kilograms) of flour, wheat, barley or rice from each person in a household, as a minimum.
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Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
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Virtual banks explained
What is a virtual bank?
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority defines it as a bank that delivers services through the internet or other electronic channels instead of physical branches. That means not only facilitating payments but accepting deposits and making loans, just like traditional ones. Other terms used interchangeably include digital or digital-only banks or neobanks. By contrast, so-called digital wallets or e-wallets such as Apple Pay, PayPal or Google Pay usually serve as intermediaries between a consumer’s traditional account or credit card and a merchant, usually via a smartphone or computer.
What’s the draw in Asia?
Hundreds of millions of people under-served by traditional institutions, for one thing. In China, India and elsewhere, digital wallets such as Alipay, WeChat Pay and Paytm have already become ubiquitous, offering millions of people an easy way to store and spend their money via mobile phone. Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines are also among the world’s biggest under-banked countries; together they have almost half a billion people.
Is Hong Kong short of banks?
No, but the city is among the most cash-reliant major economies, leaving room for newcomers to disrupt the entrenched industry. Ant Financial, an Alibaba Group Holding affiliate that runs Alipay and MYBank, and Tencent Holdings, the company behind WeBank and WeChat Pay, are among the owners of the eight ventures licensed to create virtual banks in Hong Kong, with operations expected to start as early as the end of the year.
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Lexus LX700h specs
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Fuel consumption: 11.7L/100km
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APPLE IPAD MINI (A17 PRO)
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Main camera: 12MP wide, f/1.8, digital zoom up to 5x, Smart HDR 4
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Mohammed bin Zayed Majlis
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
