Brooks Koepka has been the best golfer in the world for the better part of two years and there is no denying it.
By the World Golf Rankings — which take tangible numbers, put them into a program and spit out a player — he is the best. By major wins, he is the best. And in many golfer's opinions, he is the best as well.
But despite all that, he still often gets overlooked. On Fox, there's a promo for the U.S. Open this year and he's not even included in it, despite winning the last two U.S. Opens. It's things like that Koepka uses as a chip on his shoulder.
"You've always got to find something to give you a little bit of extra motivation. Sometimes it's blatantly obvious," Koepka said.
He continued: "You go back — there's a commercial ran now where I'm not even in it, and Fox put it up for a preview of the U.S. Open. So I don't know. You guys tell me. I wasn't on Notables after winning. There's a couple of things where it's just mind boggling how — it's like, really? Like, how do you forget that?"
Koepka runs into disrespect on and off the course and in sports books as well. Despite winning the last two U.S. Opens and PGA Championships, the 29-year-old was not favored to win at Pebble Beach when the odds were released.
The favorite was Dustin Johnson at 7-1, while Koepka was behind at 8-1. Some sites had Rory McIlroy with even odds to win despite him not winning a major championship in the PGA Championship since 2014.
All of those things are easy to keep a man motivated, but Koepka admits he finds ways to motivate himself when he might not have as many people doubting him as he'd like to think.
"You've always got to find something to give you a little bit of extra motivation," he said.
He continued: "There's other things where I just find — I just tell myself I can't do it. I can't do it. And I just want to prove myself wrong."
Koepka tees off with Francesco Molinari and Viktor Hovland at 1:47 p.m. ET in Round 1 on Thursday.