The final round of the 100th PGA Championship was almost over Sunday evening. Brooks Koepka was on the 18th green at Bellerive Country Club in St. Louis in two shots, all but certain to win the third major title of his career and second of the summer.
Said CBS roving reporter Peter Kostis with words both pointed and needed as he described the golf turned in by Koepka and playing partner Adam Scott: "This final pairing pretty much played in anonymity all day, and that's a shame because they played some spectacular golf."
They did indeed. In fact, Koepka's four-day 264 total set the PGA Championship scoring record. Beyond that, as he had at the U.S. Open earlier this summer, anytime he was threatened, he responded with another birdie - including three straight to close out the front nine - on his way to a final-round 4-under-par 66.
Unfortunately for the winner, Tiger Woods was in the process of shooting his lowest final round ever in a major with a 64, which left him in second place for the tourney by two strokes, but front and center for most of the afternoon as he attempted to win his first major title in 10 years and 15th overall.
So that's what CBS mostly showed, and that was mostly OK, because that's surely what most of the viewers wanted to see.
With Koepka still on the course, though, the network ran its "Shot of the Day." It was Woods knocking in a birdie putt on 18 to pull within two shots of the leader. Really? Not a putt to tie. Not even a putt to pull within one. A putt to pull within two when Koepka was already in the 18th fairway and all but planning where to plant his kiss on the monstrous Wanamaker Trophy.
Think about it. So there wasn't a single one of Koepka's 66 strokes worthy of the day's best shot? And if you're going to pick Tiger, there were almost certainly a couple better than that 19-foot putt on 18. There was a dramatic shot around a tree on No. 9. There was a drive to within a foot of the hole on the par-3 13th.
Don't get me wrong. Golf needs Woods. Desperately. The game is far more exciting when His Stripeness is in the hunt on Sunday's final nine. While many of those golf fans crammed into Bellerive's temporary stands would have cheered for anyone this past weekend, it was a different decibel level with Woods in contention. It was almost as loud as if they'd been cheering their city's beloved Cardinals to a World Series victory.
As Justin Thomas, last year's PGA Championship winner, noted at the close of his final round: "This is the first real Tiger Effect I've experienced."
It almost assuredly won't be the last. Woods briefly led the final round of the British Open last month. He pulled within one on Sunday's back nine despite failing to hit a single fairway on the front nine. And but for two total revolutions of the golf ball - one at the end of a 27-foot birdie attempt on No. 11 that traveled at least 26 feet, 11 3/4 inches - and a par putt on No. 14 that went halfway down before spinning out for a painful bogey, Woods might well have forced a playoff with Koepka. He might even have beaten him outright, because the pressure might have finally shaken the younger player who idolized the 42-year-old Woods during his youth.
It was all enough to have CBS color analyst Nick Faldo note of Tiger's comeback: "I didn't think he had a hope in (heck) of ever winning a major again, and now he does."
And had he won it, he would have had his first major win ever coming from behind in the final round, perhaps the most shocking stat of Tiger's otherwise illustrious career.
Koepka never let that happen. While becoming just the fifth player in history to win both the PGA Championship and the U.S. Open in the same year - joining legends Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, Gene Sarazan and Woods - Koepka played with the same calm he displayed in his back-to-back U.S. Open triumphs. He crushed the ball off the tee, putted efficiently (though rarely brilliantly) and ran away and hid every time he was threatened.
All of this after wrist surgery at the end of the 2017 season serious enough that Koepka admitted he was worried he "might never play again."
Instead, some of his stunning tee shots caused Faldo to label the former Florida State University golfer "The Human Bulldozer," and he is certainly looking the part in the majors.
"For some reason, the majors get my attention," said the 28-year-old Koepka, who now has four total PGA Tour wins. "Every shot is so important."
As big as Woods' continued return to relevance is for the game in general, there were certainly more important shots struck Sunday than his final putt on 18.
Too bad too many of them lived in the relative anonymity of Tiger's shadow. Especially since the guy that struck them was afraid he might never play again at the start of this year.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.