Blazing Brooks Kopeka smashed his way out of LIV Dallas in an outburst which set alarm bells ringing again ahead of Royal Portrush. The American star stormed off the course during Friday鈥檚 first round of the event with illness cited as the reason for his eventual withdrawal with four holes to go. Koepka had already looked sick when he cracked a tee-box marker in visible rage after another wayward shot at the ninth. The five-times Major winner slammed his club into the deck at first before subsequently whacking the marker out of the ground and in the direction of the LIV crowd. It was a brutal moment ahead of his trip across the Atlantic for the 153rd Championship and have acted to dim hopes which had had risen following the US Open that better times may lie ahead and the real Koepka might be about to shine in Northern Ireland. Koepka鈥檚 struggles at the biggest events in recent times has been sad for his fans to witness with the man who was the most-fearsome character in Major golf cowed. His history isn鈥檛 unknown. In a six-year spell between 2017 and 2023, he won three PGA Championships , two US Opens and recorded six other top-five finishes. During one outrageous stretch through the 2019 season, Kopeka didn鈥檛 finish outside the top four in any of the Majors and once famously stated that they were the 鈥渆asist鈥 to win. Injury problems were clearly amongst the biggest reasons why the run stuttered, but the switch to LIV didn鈥檛 initially halt him as he blasted back to victory with that fifth Major win at PGA Championship coming just two years ago. He made the US Ryder Cup team in Rome. However, following that success at Oak Hill, it went rapidly downhill. Last year, Koepka was unable to strike a blow as he failed to secure a Top 20 in any of the Majors and the descent continued into this term. At Augusta, while Rory McIlroy was making history to win his career Grand Slam and, importantly, match his rival’s mark of five majors, Kopeka was already long gone having missed the Masters cut. That wasn鈥檛 his first missed Masters weekend, but it was a different story with the PGA. The three-time winner of the Wanamaker Trophy had never done less than four rounds in his 12 previous appearances in the event until he got to Quail Hollow, but that record was crushed by a bruising dismissal following rounds of 75 and 76 leaving him nine-over par. Spats with fans and pictures of him buying beer in a supermarket made more headlines than his golf, yet at Oakmont a fortnight ago, there were signs of life. The opening-day 68 to be amongst the leaders at the end of a tough start at Oakmont put him back in a place where he鈥檇 once lived. Subsequently, rounds of 74 and 73 snuffed out any opportunity of him grabbing the trophy, but the Sunday 71 lifted him back-up into a tie for 12th place behind JJ Spaun and offered a first Top 20 finish at a Major in two long years. With Royal Portrush to come, the prospect of the 35-year-old rising even higher and continuing the ascent at the iconic Irish venue was a tantalising one, yet now the doubts return. It remains to be seen how much the illness played a part in his wayward scoring and loss of temper in Dallas less than three weeks from The Open, or whether the simple fact is that Oakmont offered merely a rare and brief glimpse of the old Koepka.