Putting held Brooks Koepka back this year.

The five-time major winner made his highly anticipated return to the PGA Tour after spending three seasons on LIV Golf. But he called his 2026 season “embarrassing” after missing the FedEx Cup playoffs entirely. 

Koepka’s game looked almost back to its best in stretches, but his putting was horrendous. He even switched to a Spider putter like Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy, but it did nothing to help.

The American lost strokes on the greens for the third straight season, so he’s working with McIlroy’s putting coach, Brad Faxon, to fix his biggest weakness ahead of 2027. 

The Brad Faxon drill that is helping Brooks Koepka fix his putting

Faxon’s putting philosophy is to take the thought out of the stroke. He believes the worst enemy for golfers on the green is overthinking the putt, and it’s actually far easier than players make it.

That’s why Faxon is having Koepka take putts with different clubs, like wedges and woods, to keep him from overthinking it.

Speaking on Dan Rapaport’s YouTube channel, Koepka explained, “A lot of the stuff with Faxon really has just been very simple. 

“Just trying to figure out how to get feel back into it and, using a wedge, putting with a wedge, just putting one-handed, different things, different speeds, hitting the right side of the hole, left side of the hole, and just kind of understanding that it doesn’t have to be perfect, it’ll go in.

“You don’t have to be exact and too mechanical and a lot of times you free it up. I didn’t take my own advice going down this rabbit hole with the putter, but it’s like if I take a, when I’m done with the scorecard at the end and I just see the trash can, I usually just throw the little where our scores are written and just kind of chuck in the trash can.

“And I think one of the other things we looked at was just timing over it. Like with the putter, I was I’d look at the hole or look at the target or whatever I was trying to do and then I’d be a little stagnant over it versus just being reactive and going with the feel.

“But it’s one of those things where I was trying to get better, trying to do things It just didn’t work. So, when you do that, you got to make changes.”

Switching putters might have been the worst thing to happen to Koepka this season, as it made him overanalyze that part of his game and overthink putts. If Faxon can give Koepka confidence in his short game, watch for him at the majors in 2027.