Brooks Koepka, Jordan Spieth reflect on 2012 Q-School miss at TPC Craig Ranch
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Despite the early stumble, both went on to become two of the game's biggest stars
Written by Kevin Robbins
MCKINNEY, Texas — Two of the biggest names at the AT&T Byron Nelson tried nine years ago to launch their careers at TPC Craig Ranch.
Both failed. But through failure their careers more than launched.
They soared.
Brooks Koepka and Jordan Spieth return to TPC Craig Ranch this week with a combined 20 PGA TOUR wins, including seven majors. Both players won earlier this year, as well, with Spieth claiming the Valero Texas Open and Koepka winning the Waste Management Phoenix Open for a second time.
Nine years ago, they came here for the second stage of Q-School. Koepka and Spieth both shot 8-under 280 in this muggy suburb north of Dallas. They tied for 26th place. They missed advancing to the finals by three strokes and wondered what would happen to their ambitions to play the PGA TOUR.
Koepka packed for Europe, where he won three tournaments on the Challenge Tour, which earned him an instant promotion to the European Tour in 2013. A season later, he finished eighth on the Race to Dubai money list and was named the Sir Henry Cotton Rookie of the Year. And a year after that, on the very tour that had once had eluded him and Spieth right here, he won the Waste Management Phoenix Open.
His journey story covers oceans, continents, thousands of miles and questions of what might have been. That includes the disappointment of what happened — rather, what didn’t happen — in North Texas, on these 7,468 yards of turf and sand, in the fateful fall of 2012.
Koepka thought about it Wednesday, a day before he makes his sixth start at a tournament he nearly won in 2016 (but at a different course).
He considered what might’ve happened had he succeeded at the second stage.
“Maybe I don’t get here as quickly,” Koepka said. “You know, who knows? I could’ve gone through and failed at the final stage and still be stuck on mini tours.”
Instead, he has eight PGA TOUR wins, two U.S. Open trophies, two PGAs and an unfettered path to the World Golf Hall of Fame.
He said he scarcely remembered much about TPC Craig Ranch, “a quite open, long golf course so you can bomb it,” he recalled. He said he missed a few putts in 2012. If he had made those few, he might’ve been prepping this week for the Emerald Coast Tour stop in Dothan, Alabama, in lieu of occupying the No. 12 spot in the World Golf Ranking.
“You never know,” Koepka said. “It’s one of those crazy things. But it worked out. So I’m not going to complain.”
There are no complaints from Spieth, either.
After his miss here in the second stage, Spieth chose to leave the University of Texas, where, as a freshman, he and the Longhorns had beaten Alabama in the 2012 NCAA men’s golf championships at Riviera Country Club. He already had made three TOUR starts as an amateur by that time, two at the AT&T Byron Nelson and one at the Valero Texas Open, all on sponsor’s exemptions.
So he lined up some more.
Inside of a month in early 2013, he played in four countries: Panama, Colombia, Puerto Rico and the U.S., securing his PGA TOUR future at the Valspar Championship in Florida.
He won the John Deere Classic that summer. That was the first of his 12 titles. He contended at the TOUR Championship. He was a captain’s pick for the Presidents Cup.
“It’s been an amazing journey,” he told PGATOUR.COM in 2018.
Spieth considered that journey Tuesday, when he was asked to reflect on the rejection of 2012 at TPC Craig Ranch. Was it a blessing in disguise?
“No,” he replied.
“Clearly, 2013 went well, but it was also kind of the springtime on,” he said, “so I missed the first three months of PGA TOUR events that I would have been able to have had I gotten through final stage.”
But he didn’t. Now here he is, a Texan who last month broke a string of 83 starts without a win. His victory at the Valero Texas Open and a promising performance at the Masters make him a favorite again at the AT&T Byron Nelson — on a golf course where four strokes made the difference in 2012.
“So I remember hitting like 65 out of 72 greens and just couldn't putt it in the ocean,” Spieth said. “And then worked a lot on my putting that off-season and then started to really make some and have some good finishes the next spring and it got me status and running on the PGA TOUR.”
Spieth has no trouble remembering. He missed too many short putts. “When you do that, you just wonder kind of where the solution is,” he said.
He found it just in time for 2013.