Brooks Koepka, with his then-girlfriend-now-wife Jena Sims, once had to run off to Las Vegas after his US Open victory in 2017 to escape from all the talks across the golfing fraternity. This happened because TV commentator Joe Buck mistakenly recognized Sims as Koepka’s ex-girlfriend, American Soccer star Becky Edwards!
While speaking to Golf Digest back in 2019, Jena Sims recalled the entire incident. She stated that after Koepka won the US Open in 2017, she went on to receive numerous texts. Sims stated that half of the texts were congratulatory, while the other half were questions regarding her opinion on what Joe Buck had said. She added that Buck made “an honest mistake” and they were fine with it.
“My phone LIT up. It was half like, ‘Congratulations to Brooks!’ And the other half were, ‘Did you hear what happened?’ And I was like, of course I did. It was immediate. I was like, It’s OK, life continues. We’re just fine. It was an honest mistake,” Sims said.
Jena Sims further added that they escaped the entire incident and media brawl by going to Las Vegas. She said that they were happy and later Brooks Koepka went on to meet Joe Buck, and that they were “totally cool” about the whole incident.
“I think being that we went to Vegas right after the win for five days, we kinda escaped it. We were in our own little world in Vegas celebrating. So we didn’t really have to experience what the media blew it up to be. We were by the pool and the casino just hanging out, no worries about that at all. And Brooks ended up meeting Joe Buck. They’re totally cool,” Sims added.
When Joe Buck Apologized For His Mistake
Soon after the US Open in 2017, Joe Buck appeared on The Dan Patrick Show where he was asked by the host, “How’s morale?”. To which, he immediately replied that it was good. He further went on to explain what exactly happened when he referred to Jena Sims as Brooks Koepka’s ex.
Buck said that he wasn’t aware of the information. He added that it happened because he was “handed a card” which had old information about Brooks Koepka.
“I wasn’t up on that information. I got handed a card by a buddy who was phenomenal all week, and it had old info on it. We got it right before we got off the air, but that’s not the world we live in. These days, you have to do the apology tour for getting the week-old girlfriend wrong, so, sorry world.”
