FARMINGDALE, N.Y. - His place in PGA Championship history finally secure, Brooks Koepka draped both arms around the top of the Wanamaker Trophy and let out a deep sigh.
The stress was more than he wanted. The satisfaction was more than he imagined.
Koepka lost all but one shot of his record seven-shot lead during Sunday's final round on the Black Course at Bethpage State Park. Then he lost the brutal Long Island crowd, which began chanting "D.J.! D.J.!" as Koepka was on his way to a fourth straight bogey that allowed top-ranked Dustin Johnson to pull within one shot on the back nine.
"It's New York," Koepka said. "What do you expect when you're half-choking it away?"
He responded like a player capable of piling up major championships faster than anyone since Tiger Woods.
Motivated by the crowd turning on him, Koepka delivered the key shots over the closing stretch as Johnson faded with two straight bogeys. Koepka closed with a 4-over-par 74 for a two-shot victory and joined Woods as the only back-to-back winners of the PGA Championship since the PGA of America's major went to stroke play in 1958.
That gives him four of the past eight majors he played and makes him the first golfer to hold two back-to-back major titles at the same time. He won his second straight U.S. Open last summer 60 miles down the road at Shinnecock Hills in front of a much less rowdy gallery.
When his six-foot par putt dropped in on the last hole Sunday, Koepka thrust his muscular right arm in the air and hugged his caddie hard.
"Today was definitely the most satisfying out of all of them for how stressful that round was - how stressful D.J. made that," Koepka said. "I know for a fact that was the most excited I've ever been in my life there on 18."
Koepka finished at 8-under 272.
Johnson's second straight 69 left him short of his second major title and knocks him from the top spot in the World Golf Ranking as Koepka takes over. Three-time major winner Jordan Spieth, who has another year to wait to try to complete the career Grand Slam, closed with a 71 and shared third at 2-under 278 with Patrick Cantlay (71) and England's Matt Wallace (72).
Baylor School graduate Luke List (74) was another stroke back in sixth, which is the 34-year-old former Ringgold resident's best showing in a major tournament. He also was seven strokes back entering the final round, but at the time that had him tied for second.
On Sunday, he got off to a rough start with bogeys on four of his first seven holes before negating some of the damage with back-to-back birdies before the turn. He made a triple bogey on No. 11, though, and closed out with another bogey after carding birdies on the 13th and 17th.
Koepka said at the start of last week that majors are sometimes the easiest tournaments to win, and after his first three rounds, this one should have been for him. It wasn't.
It didn't help that a raging wind that gusted up to 25 mph turned the famed public course into a beast, with Johnson the only player out of the last 12 groups to shoot par or better. Koepka's 74 was the highest final round by a PGA Championship winner since Vijay Singh (4-over 76) won in a playoff at Whistling Straits in 2004.
"I'm just glad I don't have to play any more holes," Koepka said. "That was a stressful round of golf. I'm glad to have this thing back in my hands."
Koepka appeared to wrap it up with a gap-wedge shot from 156 yards to two feet away on the 10th hole for a birdie, as Johnson made his first bogey of the round up ahead on the 11th. That restored the lead to six shots, and the coronation was on.
Then it all changed in a New York minute. Four holes later, Koepka walked off the 15th tee with a one-shot lead. He looked over to his left to see Johnson facing a seven-foot par putt on the 16th hole - the most difficult hole at Bethpage Black on Sunday because it was into the wind - to stay within one shot.
The groan of the crowd told him Johnson had missed.
"I felt like as long as I had the lead, I was fine," Koepka said. "As long as I put it in the fairway, I was going to be all right."
Koepka's performance defines his dominance in golf's biggest events. He was the first wire-to-wire winner in the PGA Championship since Hal Sutton in 1983. It was his third straight year winning a major, a feat achieved by only seven others since the Masters began in 1934 - Woods, Ralph Guldahl, Phil Mickelson, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Peter Thomson and Tom Watson.
Winning four of his past eight majors is a stretch of success that hasn't occurred since Woods won seven of 11 when he captured the 2002 U.S. Open at Bethpage Black.
Next up on the major calendar is the U.S. Open next month at Pebble Beach Golf Links, where Koepka already is the betting favorite.
No one has won the U.S. Open three straight years since Willie Anderson in 1905.
No one will doubt whether Koepka is capable of doing so, considering the way he is playing.
Johnson knew he was a long shot going into the final round - no one had ever lost a seven-shot lead in a major - and he still managed to make Koepka work for it. He came undone with a shot he thought would be perfect - a 5-iron from 194 yards, dead into the wind on the 16th. It one-hopped over the green into thick rough.
"I gave it a run," he said. "That's all you can ask for."