Koepka calls out Reed: ‘I don’t know what he was doing – building sand castles?’

These days you can always rely on Brooks Koepka for telling it like it is. Once upon a time the American was more than happy to trot out banal responses, now he’s very open and honest.

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The four-time major winner wasn’t part of the Presidents Cup side the week after the Bahamas, having had to pull out through injury, so he didn’t have to go through the nauseating routine of standing up for his team-mate Patrick Reed following his sand-sweeping episode at Tiger’s event.

So when he was asked by SiriusXM during a PGA Championship media day if he thought Reed was cheating, his answer was a pearler.

“Uh, yeah. I think, yeah, yeah. I mean, I don’t know what he was doing, building sand castles in the sand but, you know, you know where your club is. I mean, I took three months off and I can promise you I know if I touched sand.

“It’s one of those things where you know, if you look at the video obviously he grazes the sand twice and then he still chops down on it.”

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Later in the interview he added cheating goes on “more than people think” on tour citing examples of players finding rough and using their fairway woods to improve their lies.

He added: “It’s not good. It’s one of those things where it’s going to be tough to prove unless the cameras actually catch it. You’re calling them out, but at the same time you can’t really prove it.

“I’ve been guilty [of not calling players out for cheating]. I haven’t opened my mouth. But I think now if I saw it, just because of where I’m at in the game, the stature that I have, I would definitely say something.”

Reed claimed that it looked bad from the camera angle that was shown to him and that it was his word against others but Koepka isn’t buying any of that, comparing it to the Houston Astros who were caught stealing signs during the 2017 World Series.

“I guess the Astros are going through that right now. (Houston owner) Jim Crane said it, when he got asked, ‘Is it cheating?’ And he said, ‘No, we just broke the rules.’ If you play the game you understand the rules. You understand the integrity that goes on. I mean, there’s no room for it.”

Reed, who got a two-shot penalty for his actions, is in Mexico this week while Koepka is giving the WGC a miss.